BANJUL - Nigeria's military ruler General Sani Abacha visited Gambia and backed tough measures against Sierra Leone, aimed at restoring the elected government toppled in a coup.
YAOUNDE - Cameroon's supreme court rejected four petitions against presidential elections held on October 12 that are expected to return incumbent Paul Biya to power.
ABUJA - Unless Nigeria takes urgent action to curb the spread of AIDS, parts of Africa's most populous nation may turn into a disaster zone where only orphaned children are left in stricken communities.
MOSCOW - Russia's opposition Communists ended a political crisis on Wednesday when they withdrew a no-confidence vote in the government, allowing President Boris Yeltsin to switch his focus to the rest of the ex-Soviet Union.
HANOI - Vietnam's prime minister has warned that the communist country is facing growing economic problems, with farmers suffering losses, industrial growth slowing and foreign investment on the decline.
JERUSALEM - Israel and the PLO have held their highest-level security talks in months, prodded by a U.S. peace envoy to restore cooperation battered by suicide bombings.
BANGKOK - Embattled Thai premier Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, under pressure to reshuffle his cabinet or resign, warned opponents to stop making political capital from an economic crisis.
BELGRADE - Reformist Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic has won the presidential election in Montenegro, the republic's election commission announced.
WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton will propose fighting global warming by stabilizing industrial nations' emissions of "greenhouse" gases at 1990 levels by around 2010.
ISTANBUL - Two more of the nine pro-Chechen gunmen jailed in Turkey for hijacking a Russian ferry in the Black Sea in 1996 have escaped, leaving only five still in jail.
SINGAPORE - The clean-up of one of Southeast Asia's worst ever oil spills could take another seven to 10 days, Singapore Environment Minister Yeo Cheow Tong said.
BELGRADE - Serbia's invalidated presidential election will be rerun on December 7, giving Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's followers a second chance to pass the baton they fumbled by fielding a weak candidate in September.
CANBERRA - About 1,000 protesters have circled Australia's parliament house in a silent, peaceful rally against the government's plans to wipe-out Aboriginal native land title on farming land.
PARIS - France's tortured pursuit of accused Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon took a new twist on Tuesday when an historian said Papon had helped Jews.
ANKARA - Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash is expected to hold separate talks with the U.S. envoy for Cyprus, Richard Holbrooke, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
RABAT - Morocco will hold elections on November 14 for its new Lower House and December 5 for two-fifths of the Upper House seats.
ALGIERS - Algerian voters go to the polls on Thursday to elect local councils in the final stage of an electoral process which the government says will build democracy.
BONN - Germany plays host to Yasser Arafat this week, pleased with its warming ties with the Palestinians but anxious to iron out wrinkles in its normally smooth relations with Israel.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - Turkish police arrested a man with a powerful bomb in the eastern city of Elazig.
ANKARA - Turkey has jailed a blind 52-year-old human rights activist for up to 23 years for advocating a peaceful end to the country's bloody Kurdish conflict.
SINGAPORE - Thailand's mounting political crisis undermined fragile Southeast Asian currencies further on Wednesday, prompting ever more bearish forecasts from traders.
AMMAN - Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan said his country had been shocked by a secret Israeli assassination attempt last month in Amman and warned that Israel could not take its closest Arab peace partner for granted.
