YAOUNDE - Fiery words from Cameroon's main opposition, coupled with a call for an "active" boycott of Sunday's presidential election, have triggered fears of violence.
MELBOURNE - Australia, increasingly isolated against a global campaign to cut greenhouse gas emissions, has rejected a Japanese proposal to strike a compromise on the issue of binding targets for the cuts.
ROME - Italy's political crisis deepened after talks between Prime Minister Romano Prodi and communist leader Fausto Bertinotti failed to break an impasse over a 1998 budget, threatening the survival of the centre--left government.
GAZA - Freed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin returned in triumph to Palestinian-ruled Gaza and Jordan released two suspected Israeli agents in a complex swap forced on Israel by a bungled assassination attempt.
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed a three-man panel to investigate the assassination attempt on a leader of the Islamic militant movement Hamas in Jordan.
THE HAGUE - Ten Bosnian Croat war crimes suspects were jailed in The Hague after turning themselves in for trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
DUBAI - Iranian security guards overpowered an armed man when he tried to hijack an Iranian passenger plane and force it to fly to Iraq, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
NAIROBI - The Kenyan government ordered 200,000 striking teachers to go back to class or face punishment and drew a rebuke from Britain for refusing to legalise an opposition party co-founded by scientist Richard Leakey.
OTTAWA - Canada's ambassador to Mexico has resigned after publicly criticising Mexico for corruption.
JAKARTA - At least 413 people in Indonesia's remote Irian Jaya province have died of famine and disease during the severe drought affecting the archipelago.
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Bill Clinton, seeking to drum up support for an international treaty on climate change, said he was convinced the threat of global warming was real and the time had come to control it.
SANTIAGO - Chilean President Eduardo Frei has rejected right-wing charges about corruption in his centre-left government and said there were far more shady dealings during the past military regime.
ARLINGTON, Va., - The FBI has arrested three people, at least two of them with leftist leanings, on charges of spying for East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.
BOGOTA - Colombia is likely to be hit with a surge in "urban terrorism" as leftist rebels press ahead with efforts to sabotage upcoming elections, military chief said.
GENEVA - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata has accused the government of Democratic Congo of violating international accords by expelling Rwandan refugees at the weekend.
PARIS - Gunmen cut the throats of 16 civilians in a night raid in Algeria and government troops killed 11 rebels on the 11th day of a guerrilla base siege.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - An Iraqi Kurd faction backed by Turkish army artillery units said it had killed 10 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas in clashes in northern Iraq.
ISTANBUL - Around 300 Turkish female students staged a sit-down demonstration on Tuesday in protest at university authorities' refusal to register them because they wore Islamic headscarves.
UNITED NATIONS - The Security Council is considering imposing oil, arms and travel embargoes on Sierra Leone to punish the military junta that toppled the elected government last May.
GENEVA - The Red Cross federation warned of a looming humanitarian disaster that could cause many deaths in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova because of soaring poverty levels ahead of the onset of winter.
