Socialist Party

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - A characteristically defiant Slobodan Milosevic staged his political comeback yesterday, winning re-election as leader of his Socialist Party of Serbia and denouncing as a coup the popular uprising that swept him from power last month. In his first public appearance since he accepted his election defeat and resigned as the Yugoslav president on Oct. 6, a day after the uprising, Milosevic gave an aggressive opening speech to the Socialist Party congress. "Everybody in this hall knows what kind of violence and lawlessness has taken place since the coup on Oct. 5," he said.

Francehas elected only the second Socialist president in its history -- the first being Francois Mitterrand, who spent 14 years in the driver's seat back when French presidential terms lasted seven years rather than five, and who made a hard-right turn away from economic socialism and toward spending cuts after his first two years in office. The best France can hope for now is that the newly elected Francois Hollande takes a similar plunge into a pothole of pragmatism and douses any budding socialist ideas.

ATHENS, Greece - Greeks yesterday dumped the Socialist party that has ruled them for most of the past quarter-century, voting to bring in a conservative government just five months before the nation holds the Summer Olympics. With 56 percent of votes counted, Costas Karamanlis and the New Democracy Party were beating the Socialists 47 percent to 41 percent as part of a deep reshuffling of Greece's political order, the Associated Press reported. Late yesterday, the head of the governing Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, George Papandreou, conceded defeat as his opponents flooded the streets of Athens waving flags and blaring their car horns.

MADRID, Spain -- On the eve of national elections, an activist from Spain's ruling Socialist Party was gunned down in the Basque city of Mondragon, throwing a hard-fought political campaign into disarray. There was no claim of responsibility, but the government was quick to blame the militant Basque separatist organization ETA, which has set off a series of small bombs ahead of the vote and killed two Spanish policemen just across the border in France on Dec. 1. The group ended a cease-fire last year.

TOKYO -- Socialist Party leader Tomiichi Murayama attempted to defuse yesterday what he acknowledged to be "pervasive anxiety" about his surprise election as prime minister of Japan.He noted that the the word socialism no longer appears in the Socialist Party's platform."The party has changed with the times," he said.Into what, however, remains unclear.That was one of many murky areas he left unexplained at a news conference yesterday.A week ago, as merely another member of the opposition, he seemed to support a dissolution of parliament and new elections.

TOKYO -- Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama won approval yesterday for a historic reversal of his Socialist Party's pacifist policies, but the victory dealt a severe blow to party unity.A special party convention backed Mr. Murayama's declarations supporting the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, recognizing Japan's armed forces as constitutional, accepting nuclear power generation, and acknowledging the national anthem and national flag.These declarations, which Mr. Murayama made in July after forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and the splinter New Party Harbinger, reversed positions that had been the Socialists' bedrock for four decades.

Ethnic Albanians object to proposal for Macedonia peace SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Ethnic Albanian politicians expressed serious objections yesterday to a new Western-backed peace plan for Macedonia. Their comments came on the eve of talks to help end an ethnic Albanian insurgency that has threatened to develop into civil war. The ethnic Albanian leaders did not reject the draft outright, which is meant to reconcile Macedonia's majority Slavs and minority ethnic Albanians. The parties meet today to negotiate.

TOKYO -- Just when Japanese politics seemed incapable of getting any weirder, it did.Japan elected its fourth prime minister in less than a year yesterday when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) -- the most conservative faction in parliament -- threw its support behind an archenemy, the 70-year-old Socialist Party leader who has spent his long career opposing it.Tomiichi Murayama became the Socialist Party's first prime minister since 1948, elected by a 261-214 vote in the lower house of the Diet, or parliament.

TOKYO -- As sound trucks roam the streets and postersaccost pedestrians with gleaming images of eager candidates, the central figure in elections set for tomorrow is not even on the ballots.Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama may not be formally competing -- voters will choose only members of Parliament's upper chamber -- but a poor showing for his Socialist Party could force his resignation. And that, in turn, could lead to the collapse of the governing coalition of three political parties, and then a political realignment.

Japan's new government is protectionist, for corruption, against reform, against free trade and for North Korea. On the record of its ministers, it must wish to dismantle the measures for domestic political reform and economic deregulation that the ousted coalition enacted.The new prime minister has regarded the United States as the bad guy and North Korea's Kim Il Sung as the good guy in any dispute between them.The right wing of the Liberal Democratic Party and left wing of the Socialist Party have in common only their addiction to corruption and opposition to opening markets to foreign competition.

CARACAS, Venezuela --President Hugo Chavez has begun forging a single Socialist party among his varied supporters, one of his recent efforts to create momentum for far-reaching changes to Venezuela's political system that analysts say will effectively concentrate greater political power in his hands. Chavez announced the plan for the single party, called the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, in a speech last month to supporters here. He reminded them of his 23-percentage-point margin of victory when he was re-elected last month to a six-year term.

Catherine Leroy, 60, a photojournalist whose stark images of battle helped tell the story of Vietnam in Life magazine and other publications, died of cancer Saturday in Santa Monica, Calif. The French-born Ms. Leroy was 21 in 1966 when she took a one-way ticket to Saigon to document American troops in Vietnam. A year later she was the only accredited journalist to take part in a combat parachute jump with the 173rd Airborne during Operation Junction City. Her 1967 photo Corpsman in Anguish portrays a young Marine, his face wrenched in torment, hunched over the body of his friend while smoke from the battle rises behind them.

PARIS -- France's far-right political party, the National Front, has emerged stronger than ever from the civil unrest that has beset the country in the past six months, a new survey shows, suggesting that the party could play a major role in the presidential election next year. The National Front's outspoken and vehemently anti-immigration leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has had occasional bursts of support before: Four years ago, he made it to the runoff for president, losing to President Jacques Chirac.

BELGRADE, Serbia and Montenegro -- The coffin slid down the luggage conveyor after a baby carriage, several large cartons and suitcases as a few friends gathered on the runway under a fine snow yesterday to welcome home the body of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The coffin was draped with the Serbian flag and put into a rented hearse for the trip to a state hospital morgue where the body would be held overnight. Milosevic will be buried Saturday in his hometown of Pozarevac.

David Shulman, 91, a self-described Sherlock Holmes of Americanisms who dug through obscure, often crumbling publications to hunt down the first use of thousands of words, died on Oct. 30 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, said Mr. Shulman contributed uncountable early usages to the 20-volume lexicon. Mr. Shulman considered the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue his real home. He recorded his finds on index cards, sending them to the OED when he had produced a bundle of 100 cards.

THIRD PARTY is written all over Bob Auerbach. Could be the broad-brimmed straw hat with political buttons orbiting the crown - "Meat is Murder," "We Won't Go," "Socialist Party" - or the fringe of white beard or a blissful demeanor suggesting abiding faith in further human improvement. In other words, not your basic congressman. Nonetheless, he is running for Congress as a Green Party candidate, which would not be so novel except that the Green Party will appear on state ballots this year.

Catherine Leroy, 60, a photojournalist whose stark images of battle helped tell the story of Vietnam in Life magazine and other publications, died of cancer Saturday in Santa Monica, Calif. The French-born Ms. Leroy was 21 in 1966 when she took a one-way ticket to Saigon to document American troops in Vietnam. A year later she was the only accredited journalist to take part in a combat parachute jump with the 173rd Airborne during Operation Junction City. Her 1967 photo Corpsman in Anguish portrays a young Marine, his face wrenched in torment, hunched over the body of his friend while smoke from the battle rises behind them.

SPURNING THE FASHION for conservative politics, the French electorate has followed Britain's in putting the party of the left in power. In both countries it is the moderate left, no longer crusading for massive state ownership, but resolved to strengthen what remains of the welfare state.Conservative President Jacques Chirac arrogantly heeded the polls while disregarding the economy in calling the election unnecessarily early. With nearly 13 percent unemployment, the younger French voters chose the Socialist Party's promise to create 700,000 jobs, half in the public sector, and to reduce the 39-hour work week to 35 hours with no loss in pay.These were the voters who four years ago put the center-right coalition in massive majority in the National Assembly and put the Socialist Party's future in doubt.

ATHENS, Greece - Greeks yesterday dumped the Socialist party that has ruled them for most of the past quarter-century, voting to bring in a conservative government just five months before the nation holds the Summer Olympics. With 56 percent of votes counted, Costas Karamanlis and the New Democracy Party were beating the Socialists 47 percent to 41 percent as part of a deep reshuffling of Greece's political order, the Associated Press reported. Late yesterday, the head of the governing Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, George Papandreou, conceded defeat as his opponents flooded the streets of Athens waving flags and blaring their car horns.

PARIS - Vastly experienced as a mayor, prime minister and now president, Jacques Chirac is beginning to look like one of Europe's great political survivors, even as he becomes ensnarled in allegations of corruption. The allegations of wrongdoing linked to his tenure as mayor of Paris, from 1977 to 1995, have left the French public largely unconcerned. The press rarely manages to fluster him. And judicial investigators don't have the authority to question him. He remains favored to win next year's presidential elections, even though he hasn't declared his candidacy for a second term.