JAKARTA, Jan 1 (AFP) - Volleys of shots were fired and the blast of home-made bombs was heard on New Year's Eve in the violence-ravaged Indonesian city of Ambon in the Maluku islands, a report said Monday.

The shots and the blasts erupted from various quarters in the city a few minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve and lasted for more than an hour but there were no reports of any injured, the state Antara news agency said.

People were firing to mark the arrival of the New Year and were not aiming at buildings or people, Antara said.

Security personnel were deployed in all

Kidnapped: They have been captivated during the several attacks on the villages launched by the rebels throughout the war started in 1991. Attacks made in order to destabilise the government and to punish the civilians whose only alleged guilt had been not to revolt against what the rebels considered a corrupt government. Onslaughts went hand in hand with the worst atrocities (houses were looted and burnt, people mutilated, killed, raped), and torn families apart. The rebels kidnapped thousands of children, maybe 10.000 since the beginning of the war. The

Samaritan's Purse has been working in Sudan since 1993. In a part of Africa infamous for persecution and desolation, we have developed extensive ministries to thousands suffering from the ongoing civil war. Following is a summary of these ministries:
MEDICAL RELIEF

About 200,000 patients have been treated and thousands of lives saved at the Lui Hospital, operated by Samaritan's Purse since 1997, and at the Akot Clinic, opened in 1999. International doctors who volunteer with World Medical Mission (the medical arm of Samaritan's

WINDHOEK, Dec 31 (AFP) - Two Namibian nationals have said that UNITA rebels abducted and tortured them and seven other villagers, killing three, a human rights organisation said Sunday.

Daniel Ndeluudila, 54, and Simeon Hamulo, 23, told the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) that they and the other villagers were abducted on December 25 in northeast Namibia and taken across the border into Angola.

They claimed their captors were a group of between 50 and 100 rebels from the National Union for the Total Independence

Brazzaville, Congo - 11 des 14 villes du Niari dans le sud du Congo et fief de l'ancien président déchu Pascal Lissouba, échappent au contrôle des troupes gouvernementales, a annoncé dimanche à Brazzaville, un journaliste de la radio officielle, Raph Lomat Ekémi, qui vient de séjourner dans la région.
Selon M. Ekémi, les forces d'autodéfense de la résistance (FADER), aile armée du Conseil national de la résistance (CNR) ont installé leur quartier général à Mossendjo, deuxième ville du Niari, située à 150 km de la frontière gabonaise.

Il n'a cependant pas précisé si la ville

MEXICO CITY, Dec 31 (AFP) - The Mexican volcano Popocatepetl began to emit a constant stream of steam and ash early Sunday, according to the national disaster prevention center Cenapred.

The snow-capped volcano, whose name means "smoking mountain" in the native Nahuatl language, erupted briefly late Saturday and was stable before beginning again early the next morning, according to a Cenapred report.

Early Sunday, Popocatepetl, located 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the capital began to emit a constant stream of water vapor and ash, the center said.

ADDIS ABABA, Dec 31 (AFP) - Organisation of African Unity Secretary General Salim Ahmed Salim has expressed confidence that the new year will usher in a fresh beginning for the African continent.
"I remain confident and optimistic over the prospects for a new beginning for our continent in the new century," Salim said in an address late Saturday to mark the end of the year.

"I am looking forward to that new beginning in which good governance, respect for human rights and a consolidation of the democratization process will prevail in Africa," he said.

From Health in Emergencies Issue 8
Kosovo's «Polio First» campaign for 2000 got off to a bad start. Originally scheduled to begin in April, it was postponed until September because an outbreak of tularaemia over the winter waylaid many of the main players in the campaign. Five months later everything should have been in place, but as can often happen, many details still had to be fixed in the first couple of days of the first round. Vaccines

From Health in Emergencies Issue 8
As part of the global polio eradication campaign, national immunisation days (NID) were conducted on 20 October and 20 November. This is the fourth round of NIDs in the country, organised by the Government with assistance from WHO and UNICEF. About 2.2 million children less than 5 years old throughout country were immunized with the polio vaccine. A total of 12,000 immunisation posts in Ri (the smallest