Putin is widely seen as a popular politician in Russia

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin became acting president Friday after the sudden resignation of Boris Yeltsin, who apologized to the nation for his mistakes and said it was time for new leadership in a new century.
Yeltsin announced his resignation at noon Friday (0900 GMT/4 a.m. EST). Yeltsin, who was due to step down six months from now, looked pale and grim as he addressed the public on national television.

Taliban official says talks with hijackers went well

Negotiations to free passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines jet held captive for a week went well on Thursday, but no breakthrough was made, according to the foreign minister of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militian.

Thai film censors have banned showings of "Anna and the King" there, saying its portrayal of 19th-century King Mongkut was inaccurate and insulting to the royal family. The Twentieth Century Fox movie stars Jodie Foster as the Victorian English teacher Anna Leonowens and Chow Yun-Fat as Thailand's King Mongkut. Thailand's 19-member censorship board spent four hours reviewing the film on Tuesday before deciding to ban it. The studio has 15 days to appeal that decision.

Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat in a scene from "Anna & the King" 

European storm reaches Romania
Heavy snows and rain left more than 100 villages in central Transylvania without electricity as the brutal weather plaguing Europe for the past week reached Romania. The blackout occurred after the storm toppled trees and power lines in Transylvania, about 450 kilometers (281 miles) from Bucharest. The downed trees also caused a number of roadblocks.

Intel unveils faster chip
Intel Corp. introduced its fastest chip for desktop personal computers Monday, once again overtaking rival Advanced Micro Devices Corp. in the race for the speediest microprocessor. Intel's launch of its 800-MHz Pentium III processor comes months ahead of schedule. Company officials previously said the new chip would be available sometime in the first half of 2000. The move gives Intel the edge over AMD, whose fastest model is the 750-MHz Athlon chip.

Discovery blasts off on Hubble repair mission
nday on a rare Christmas mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been idle since mid-November. The launch ended a string of nine frustrating delays. The Hubble mission originally was scheduled for October, but was repeatedly changed because of a barrage of equipment trouble: damaged wiring, a contaminated engine, a dented fuel pipe and, just last Thursday, welding concerns.

Macau's handover  (CNN reports)

U.S., China reach deal on damage to Belgrade embassy
The United States and China have reached an agreement to settle damage claims over NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and subsequent violent protests at U.S. facilities in China, a U.S. official said Wednesday. A U.S. delegation led by State Department legal adviser David Andrews hammered out the deal with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials in Beijing this week, the official said.
Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday that Washington would pay Beijing $28 million in compensation.

Microsoft to ship Windows 2000 code
After an arduous three years of development, Microsoft Wednesday announced the release of the finished code for Windows 2000, the latest operating system in the Windows family. Code for Windows 2000 is being delivered to software manufacturing plants in the United States, Europe and Asia to begin duplicating disks, building boxes and delivering the product.

美国签证可以到银行办
 http://finance.sina.com.cn  北京晚报
　今天上午，几位欲赴美人员到中信实业银行建国门分行递交了签证申请。这是不久前该银行受美国使馆委托为因私再次赴美人员开办的新业务，申请人如符合条件即可免去面谈等繁琐程序。据悉，每年约2500人左右需办理此项业务。以往申请人往返使馆预约、面谈等程序繁琐，极不方便。“代传递业务”主要是针对因私再次赴美人员的签证申请，美国使馆委托中信实业银行收取申请人的材料，传递到美国使馆，同时取回美国使馆已审核的签证申请材料，传递给申请人。

NASA to re-evaluate entire Mars program
Though the chance of success is now slim, NASA scientists are still trying to contact the missing Mars Polar Lander, and those efforts will continue for two weeks. Scenarios for contacting the lander are more complicated now, and even less plausible than those already tried, said Richard Cook, the spacecraft's operations manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The last realistic opportunity to contact the Mars Polar Lander ended Tuesday with no response from the spacecraft.

Self-updating virus spreads on Internet
A new computer virus, W95.Babylonia updates itself automatically with files from the Web, and could pave the way for smarter viruses with heavy payloads.

WTO ends Seattle conference with deadlock
Rocked by protests, the World Trade Organization's four-day conference in Seattle limped to an inconclusive end with no agenda established for a new round of global trade talks. "Issues that remained were highly complicated, and we believe could not be overcome rapidly," U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said. The ministers' meetings were punctuated by the chants of demonstrators and the smell of tear gas during the conference.

24-hour Seattle curfew near WTO site
The area of downtown Seattle surrounding the World Trade Organization conference is under an around-the-clock curfew until midnight Friday as authorities move to prevent more violence and disruptions. Outside the curfew area, in an overnight confrontation in a residential neighborhood that ended early Thursday, police fired tear gas on a crowd that was a mix of protesters and residents.

Northern Ireland's new government prepares for first meeting
After 30 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland, a new Belfast government of Protestants and Catholics is preparing to hold its first session on Thursday. Britain's government transferred power to a 12-member home-rule Cabinet at the stroke of midnight, after the British Parliament and Queen Elizabeth approved the new Northern Ireland government. As part of the new arrangement, local politicians will attempt to create a future built on mutual respect, and compromise.

Scientists sequence first human chromosome
The Human Genome Project has for the first time sequenced a human chromosome: number 22, the second smallest. It was chosen to be sequenced first because it is one of the most densely packed, with 33.5 million pieces, or chemical components. The work, done by a group of scientists from England, the United States, Canada, Sweden and Japan, is an important step forward for the $3 billion Human Genome Project, which is working to detail the tens of thousands of genes in humans.

Brain imaging suggests acupuncture works, study says
Western medicine has been skeptical of the benefits of acupuncture, but researchers in New Jersey say that evidence derived from brain imaging shows the treatment helps to relieve pain. During the treatment, very fine needles are inserted slightly into the skin at certain prescribed points to relieve pain or other ailments.

New version of ExploreZip defies anti-virus systems
ExploreZip, the worm that devastated systems in June, is now back in a compressed version that is slipping through anti-virus security systems. The worm infected several major companies on Tuesday. Dubbed MiniZip by some security vendors -- a reference to how the worm has been compressed -- the latest outbreak uses exactly the same technology as ExploreZip, the only difference being that it has been compressed in a format that masks it from security systems which scan incoming messages for attacks.

Chip makers race to 1,000MHz
Escalating rivalry between Intel and AMD expected to pay shoppers an unexpected dividend next year and beyond.

Seattle officials determined violence won't occur again
As President Clinton prepared Wednesday to address the World Trade Organization in Seattle, demonstrators who battled with police, throwing the conference into chaos on its opening day, vowed to repeat the disruptions. Authorities insisted that wouldn't happen.

In-Depth: Macau Handover (contents in Simplified Chinese)
China will resume the exercise of sovereignty over Macao on December 20, 1999. After its homecoming, Macao will become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, exercising the principles of "one country , two systems", "Macao people ruling Macao" and a high level of autonomy. These principles will remain unchanged for 50 years to ensure Macao's continuous stability and development.