Breakaway

Heavy fighting erupted in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia overnight, as national troops backed by warplanes bombed the republic's capital and local officials reported mounting civilian casualties. The clashes in the remote region of the Caucasus, which raged unabated into this morning, broke out just hours after the two sides had declared a cease-fire. The attacks are the most serious to date in a series of escalating confrontations between U.S.

The European Parliament said Russia's peacekeeping mission in Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region is not neutral and the terms of its deployment must be changed. The European Union assembly demanded in a nonbinding resolution that member nations send their own border mission to Abkhazia. Georgian officials have asked for EU participation in the U.N.-monitored peacekeeping forces. Moscow has offered passports to Abkhaz residents and those of South Ossetia, another breakaway area in Georgia, and said it would establish ties with separatist institutions in the two regions.

A Virginia court has ruled in favor of 11 conservative congregations that broke away from the U.S. Episcopal Church and want to keep property worth millions of dollars, parties in the dispute said Friday. The ruling is the latest development in an upheaval over orthodoxy roiling the global Anglican community. Its U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church, has been beset by disputes, including one involving the installation of an openly gay bishop.

Serbian President Boris Tadic made a last-minute plea to world leaders Friday to avoid recognizing an independent Kosovo, insisting that though Serbia remains committed to full integration with Europe, "we cannot accept the dismemberment of our nation." With the Serbian province now widely expected to declare independence Feb.

The Security Council on Wednesday ended its attempt to resolve the status of Kosovo because of Russian objections, leaving it to the European Union and NATO to foster the breakaway province's move toward independence without sparking new conflict in the Balkans. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority plans to declare independence from Serbia early next year, with the backing of the United States and most European nations.

The former security chief of Nagorno-Karabakh was sworn in as the new president of the Armenian-controlled breakaway region. Bako Saakian, who took 85% of the vote in July, headed Nagorno-Karabakh's security service from 2001 until he resigned to run for president. Saakian pledged to push for full independence of the mountainous territory inside Azerbaijan, which has run its own affairs without international recognition since driving out Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s.

Three conservative parishes that severed their ties with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles have filed petitions asking the California Supreme Court to review a recent appeals court decision that upheld the diocese's claim to the parishes' buildings and other property. The churches -- St. James in Newport Beach, All Saints in Long Beach and St.

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles is the rightful owner of the buildings and other property of a conservative La Crescenta congregation that broke away from the diocese last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday. The decision by Judge John Shepard Wiley Jr. against St. Luke's of the Mountains came more than a week after an appeals court panel in Orange County ruled in favor of the six-county Los Angeles Diocese in a similar property dispute with three other parishes.

Signaling deep discontent and a possible spreading revolt among the city's public school teachers, faculty at two more Los Angeles high schools met this week with a leading charter school operator to discuss alliances aimed at breaking away from the school district.

THE FIRST-PLACE FINISH of a pro-independence party in elections for the Scottish Parliament doesn't mean that the northernmost nation of the United Kingdom is about to break away, any more than the triumph of French separatists in Quebec's elections 31 years ago led to the crack-up of Canada. Some of the defections from the Labor Party to the Scottish Nationalist Party probably reflect disaffection with lame-duck Prime Minister Tony Blair more than any endorsement of independence.