WORLD AGENDA JUNE 2004

June 4: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry returns to the screens when Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban goes on general release worldwide. Based on the novel by Scottish author JK Rowling, the third Harry Potter film is directed by Mexican Alfonso Cuaron.

June 4, Australia: The Olympic flame starts its 27-nation relay in Sydney before returning to Athens for the formal opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on August 13.

June 6, France: Seventeen heads of state and government are expected in Normandy to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Fourteen veterans Ð each representing a country involved in the Allied assault on HitlerÕs occupying forces Ð will be decorated by President Jacques Chirac.

June 8: Europe, the Middle East and much of Asia and Africa will offer prime viewing for the transit of the planet Venus across the sun, an event that has not occurred for 122 years.

June 12, Lisbon: More than 350,000 football fans from around the world are expected in Portugal as the Euro 2004 Championship kicks off.

June 16, Dublin: The centenary of James JoyceÕs modernist classic Ulysses marks the start of a five-month festival, ÒReJoyce 2004Ó, celebrating the Irish author.

June 22, Vietnam: Gloria Gaynor, Lionel Ritchie, and Hootie and the Blowfish are among 25 artists due to perform at the World Peace Music Awards in Hanoi. Proceeds will help victims of Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam War.

June 28-29, Istanbul: A NATO summit in Turkey, the only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the largest gathering of foreign leaders in the country in five years, is being seen as a prime terrorist target.

June 29, Indonesia: North Korea, a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum for four years, will take a small step towards ending its isolation when it sends its Foreign Minister, Paek Nam-sun, to the 23-member groupÕs annual meeting, in Jakarta, for the first time.

June 30, Baghdad: The United States hands over power to an Iraqi administration, though 135,000 US troops will remain in the country and Coalition Provisional Authority regulations are likely to stay in place until elections in January 2005.

Undated, Columbia: The United Nations launches an action plan to help some of the more than two million displaced people in the country where a 39-year drug-fuelled war has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere.

Parliamentary elections in the European Union (June 10-13), Luxembourg (June 13) and Mongolia (June 27). Presidential elections in Lithuania (June 13), Serbia (June 13) and Iceland (June 26).
/ENDS