In the World

MEXICO CITY - Antiabortion activists vowed yesterday to demonstrate outside clinics and publicize the names of doctors who perform abortions now that the Mexico City legislature has legalized the practice.

Foes also promised a Supreme Court battle over the measure, which would legalize abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard says he will sign the law. It would take effect in 60 days.

The measure has raised church-state tensions in this mostly Catholic nation. - AP

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A federal court threw out amnesties yesterday for two leaders of Argentina's military dictatorship, saying they must serve their life terms in prison for crimes against humanity.

Former military president Jorge Videla and Navy chief Eduardo Massera were leading members of the 1976-1983 military junta that waged a "dirty war" against political opponents, seizing and killing about 9,000 people, according to official records. Human-rights groups put the death toll closer to 30,000.

Sentenced to life terms in 1985 after Argentina's return to democracy, Videla and Massera were granted amnesties five years later by President Carlos Menem, who freed them from a military prison.

Yesterday's decision, read to the Associated Press by a clerk for the Federal Criminal Court, declared the amnesties to be unconstitutional.- AP

TOKYO - Japan adopted stricter gun-control rules yesterday after a spate of gangster shootings that rattled a nation renowned for crime-free streets.

"Most of the guns that are confiscated in Japan are foreign guns," Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hakubun Shimomura said. "It is important to prevent an influx of these guns from abroad."

The new guidelines for law-enforcement agencies will require foreign aircraft and ships to report more detailed information on their cargo, passengers and crew.

Calls for more gun control intensified after last week's fatal shooting of Nagasaki's mayor, and a gangster attack in a Tokyo suburb.- AP

A former Polish government minister, Barbara Blida, committed suicide in her bathroom yesterday as police searched her house in connection with corruption allegations.

Dozens of foreign and Palestinian journalists held protests on both sides of Israel's border with the Gaza Strip yesterday, calling for the release of a British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent Alan Johnston, 44, who was kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen six weeks ago.

A group of British climate scientists is demanding changes to a skeptical documentary about global warming, saying that grave errors exist in The Great Global Warming Swindle, billed as a response to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.