Globe Trotting

Armenian President resignsYEREVAN: Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan said today he had resigned under pressure from political opponents...

Armenian President resigns

YEREVAN: Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan said today he had resigned under pressure from political opponents. 8220;I have faced demands to resign,8221; he said in a statement read over the telephone to Reuters by a spokesman. 8220;Considering that in this situation, exercising the President8217;s consititutional powers may cause a serious destabilisation of the situation, I accept this demand and announce my resignation8221;. Ter-Petrosyan, who led the country since it became independent in 1991 after the Soviet Union8217;s collapse, won another presidential term in 1996. Opponents charged he rigged the polls.

4 die in HK fire

HONG KONG: Four people were killed and nine injured in a fire believed to have been started by an electrical short circuit in a residential building here today. Most of the victims were reportedly asleep when the fire swept through the nine-storey building in Kwun Tong. Another 45 people were rescued by firemen, as police used loudspeakers to adviseresidents not to panic or leap out of the building.

A fire department spokesman said it appeared to have been started by a blast in a stairway electrical box.

Wolf awards

JERUSALEM: Two Israeli professors were awarded the Wolf prize in medicine on Tuesday for their discoveries in the field of immunology. Michael Sela, 74, and Ruth Arnon, 65, both of the Weizman Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, will share the 100,000 dollars prize. The two conceived the idea of synthetic vaccines and opened the door to peptide vaccines. Their discoveries have enabled the production of safe and effective vaccines against infectious diseases, the Wolf Prize Foundation Committee said.

Germans held

COLOMBO: Two Germans were arrested by Sri Lankan customs officials who accused them of trying to smuggle out thousands of rare insects and fish, an official said yesterday. Reinhard Ehrmann, 45, and Kurt Henry Muller, 36, told investigators that they were collecting specimens for a museum in Karlsruhe,Germany, said Samantha Goonasekera, a customs official. But officials suspect that the insects may have been meant for private collectors who pay hundreds of dollars for rare species.