LONDON: Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein, has joined the United States lecture circuit, the Sunday Telegraph reported, offering his services for $30,000 a time. The paper said Adams, not mentioned in last year's Nobel peace prize which was shared by two other Northern Ireland leaders, was being touted as the man who ``rescued the Irish peace process from the brink of failure''. It said he had signed with the American Program Bureau promotion agency, which also has Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev and former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten in its books. Adams' move has angered families of the victims of Irish Republican Army violence and Unionists.

Albright to meet Yeltsin

Moscow: US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is arriving here on Monday amid indications that the Clinton administration was ready to bail out Russia from the present economic crisis. Albright's visit, coming when the US-Russian relations have touchedtheir nadir in the post-Cold War era, is also expected to be aimed at helping Moscow restructure its huge foreign debt on which it has defaulted. Relations between United States and Russia have soured in the wake of US sanctions against three Russian scientific centres.

More threats to Taslima

DHAKA: Controversial feminist writer Taslima Nasreen has received fresh death threats from Muslim fundamentalists even as police claimed on Sunday that 10 persons arrested in connection with the recent attempt on a veteran poet's life had connections with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. Fresh threats to her life are being issued by anonymous callers, Taslima's family sources said.