BRIEFS

BILL OUTLAWS DENYING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE. French lawmakers

approved yesterday a bill making it a crime to deny that mass killings of

Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I amounted to genocide. The

issue has become intertwined with Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.

The bill, which must still go to the Senate and be signed by President Jacques

Chirac, would recognize the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to

1919 as genocide. Those who contest a genocide face prison and fines up to

$56,000. Turkey, accused of the massacre when Armenia was under the Ottoman

Empire, says the deaths occurred in civil unrest during the empire's collapse.

ISRAELI MISSILES KILL EIGHT IN GAZA. An Israeli aircraft fired a missile at

a building in a crowded Gaza City neighborhood after nightfall yesterday,

killing a girl about 10 years old, and a militant, Palestinians said. The

Israeli military said the owner of the house, Ashraf Farawana, is a Hamas

leader who was involved in attacks against Israel and supplying weapons to

Hamas militants. During a predawn raid in southern Gaza, Israeli aircraft fired

two missiles at a crowd of Palestinians, killing four Hamas militants and two

other people.

PENTAGON REVIEWING OF IRAQ WAR STRATEGY. The nation's top military officer

said yesterday that the Pentagon is conducting a review of U.S. military

strategy in Iraq in the face of mounting U.S. casualties and deepening

sectarian violence, Newsday correspondent Craig Gordon reports from Washington.

But Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signaled no major

shift from the broad U.S. strategy of training Iraqi forces to take on greater

security responsibilities so that American troops eventually can leave. The

review comes as the Army announced this week it was preparing for the prospect

of keeping the current level of U.S. forces in Iraq until 2010.