KAMPALA - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Sudanese rebel leader John Garang in Uganda and called for a new, anti-terrorist government in Khartoum.
NAIROBI - When Kenyans vote on December 29, President Daniel arap Moi will face a challenger for his parliamentary seat for the first time since 1969.
PARIS - France's Socialist-led government adopted a bill on Wednesday to reward firms with cash subsidies if they shorten work hours and recruit more staff.
KYOTO, Japan - An historic deal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions was only hours away after Europe and the United States narrowed differences about the size of reductions but kept haggling how to implement them.
MOSCOW - A hijacker who seized a Russian passenger plane with about 140 people on board surrendered and freed all hostages.
ANKARA - Turkey's conservative prime minister looks certain to win a parliamentary challenge but the wrangle has renewed doubts over the shelf-life of his minority government.
BELFAST - Right-wing members of Northern Ireland's Protestant Orange Order occupied the movement's offices to disrupt internal elections and demand an end to concessions to Roman Catholic critics.
TEHRAN - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed the third world should have greater representation in the Security Council but quashed the idea of a permanent seat for the world's Moslems.
PARIS - Gunmen slit the throats of seven civilians, and two bomb explosions killed two people and wounded 25 in Algeria.
BALTIMORE - Tests to replicate conditions in the fuel tank of TWA Flight 800 show the tank was ripe to explode, a hearing of the National Transportation Safety Board was told.
TEHRAN - Moslem leaders were due to debate deadlocked Middle East peace efforts on Wednesday in a closed session on the second day of an Islamic summit.
BELGRADE - International observers at this week's Serbian presidential elections declared them fundamentally flawed, but Belgrade authorities say this does not make the vote invalid.
WASHINGTON - The United States embraced a call by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami for a dialogue among civilisations and renewed its offer to hold talks with an "authorized" Iranian government representative.
MARRAKESH, Morocco - Experts in Morocco were tracking British tycoon Richard Branson's rogue balloon over Algeria, hoping to recover it and put back on track his bid to fly non-stop around the world.
WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appeared at a politically charged congressional hearing to defended her decision not to seek an independent counsel to probe White House campaign fund-raising activities.
JERUSALEM - Israel's government raced to enact a broadly worded ban on PLO activity in Arab East Jerusalem, a measure likely to spark Palestinian anger at a sensitive point in the sides' troubled peace talks.
ABIDJAN - Cheaper AIDS drugs will arrive in Africa from January under a controversial UNAIDS pilot project but critics say the large sums of money involved could be better spent on the hunt for a vaccine.
HARARE - The Zimbabwean government formally scrapped a controversial war veterans' levy, hours after police used tear gas and clubs to stop a workers' demonstration against the levy.
Autor: Edited by ZUZANA VILIKOVSKÁ
