World -- News In Brief

GORBACHEV ADVISER TO DIRECT NEW KGB

MOSCOW - In a move to break up the KGB as the Soviet Union's once all-powerful intelligence and security force, President Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday appointed his chief foreign policy adviser to direct the foreign intelligence activities under the aegis of an independent state agency.

Yevgeny Primakov, 61, was named first deputy chairman of the State Security Committee, as the KGB is formally known, with a mandate from Gorbachev to plan the separation of intelligence-gathering from the agency's security and counterespionage functions.

ATTACKS BY NEO-NAZIS FRUSTRATE GERMAN POLICE

BERLIN - A nationwide police union is expressing frustration at what it calls the lack of political will to bring an end to dozens of attacks on foreigners in recent weeks by neo-Nazis.

The incidents are on the rise as unified Germany prepares to celebrate its first anniversary.

About 20 neo-Nazis stormed a restaurant in the eastern German town of Ilmenau yesterday, hitting foreign students with baseball bats.

U.S. SOLDIERS FINALLY END KOREAN BORDER PATROLS

SEOUL, South Korea - U.S. soldiers today withdrew from a strategic border with Communist North Korea, handing their camps and patrol mission over to South Korean troops for the first time in 38 years.

A brief ceremony marked the departure of U.S. troops from the sensitive area just south of the truce village of Panmunjom, inside the demilitarized zone that separates the rival Koreas.

ZAIRE'S PRIME MINISTER WARNS OF COMING FAMINE

KINSHASA, Zaire - Zaire's new prime minister, Etienne Tshisekedi, said corruption was over after 26 years of iron rule by President Mobutu Sese Seko, but he warned of impending famine and appealed for foreign help.

Tshisekedi's bold start as premier could not conceal the political mine field ahead as he started work yesterday in uneasy tandem with Mobutu.

The president, who has run the vast central African country as a personal fiefdom since 1965, was forced by western and domestic pressure to share power with a man he once put in an asylum.

8-FOOT-3-INCH MAN IN LONDON HOSPITAL

LONDON - Doctors are treating a Bangladesh man who is 8 feet 3 inches tall and still growing.

Parimal Chandra Barman, 27, will be listed in the Guinness Book of Records next year as the tallest man in the world, Guinness Publishing Ltd. said.

He will replace Haji Mohammad Alam Channa, 38, from Pakistan, who stands 7 feet 8 inches tall, and will rank fourth-tallest man ever. The tallest man ever was Robert Wadlow of Illinois, who was 8 feet 11 inches.

Barman is a patient at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. The British news agency Press Association said Barman was thought to be suffering from a tumor on the pituitary gland, which produces growth hormone.

Times news services