The Central Intelligence Agency, which has repeatedly pledged for more than five years to make public the files from its secret mission to overthrow the government of Iran in 1953, has said it has destroyed or lost almost all the documents decades ago.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has said there is no prospect of a summit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to break a two-month-old peace deadlock sparked by Israeli settlement in the occupied land. The impasse deepened yesterday as the Treasury said Israel plans to pump some $16.5 million into further development of Jewish settlements.

This news from Kinshasa, Congo: Soldiers broke up a banned opposition march on the eve of Laurent Kabila’s inauguration as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, his new name for Zaire. Several thousand supporters of veteran opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi took part in the March, denouncing the presence of Rwandans among Kabila’s forces who marched into Kinshasa on May 17 to oust the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Soldiers from Kabila’s alliance allowed the march to go ahead after initial hesitation, but dispersed the protesters later.

Five weeks after testimony began in the trial of Timothy McVeigh, his lawyers have unleashed their final salvo against the prosecution’s most powerful witness, then rested their case. The chief target on the final day of evidence was the credibility of Michael Fortier, McVeigh’s old Army buddy, who testified for the government two weeks ago that McVeigh had told him of plans to build a truck bomb and that both of them cased the Federal Building in Oklahoma City a few months before just such a bomb demolished it.

Bob Dylan is being treated for a potentially fatal chest infection that forced him to cancel an upcoming European tour. Dylan turned 56 on Saturday. He was admitted to an undisclosed hospital over the weekend with severe chest pains.