KINSHASA - A firing squad in the Democratic Republic of the Congo executed 16 convicted criminals in front of thousands of onlookers.
FREETOWN - Nigerian-led West African peacekeepers took control of Sierra Leone's northern town of Makeni and freed 50 Church workers trapped there by fighting for three weeks.
UMHLANGA, South Africa - South African police have arrested a man suspected of murdering two Swedish tourists at an east coast holiday resort.
MAPUTO - The 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) expressed concern over the faltering peace process in Angola and called for stricter implementation of sanctions against the rebel UNITA movement.
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Security Council, in a unanimous vote, warned Iraq of "severest consequences" if it again barred U.N. arms inspectors from any suspected arms sites.
WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton underscored a stern warning sent to Iraq by a unanimous U.N. Security Council, urging Iraq to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to do their work or face "severest consequences."
BAGHDAD - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said his country would live up to the agreement signed with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over arms inspections of so-called "presidential sites".
MOSCOW - Cosmonauts on the Russian Mir space station abandoned a planned spacewalk on Tuesday after they used the wrong tools and broke three wrenches trying to open an outer hatch.
JAKARTA - The United States told Indonesia's President Suharto he had to vigorously implement reforms prescribed by the International Monetary Fund to pull the nation out of a debilitating economic crisis.
NABATIYEH, Lebanon - Israeli planes carried out two raids on suspected positions of pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon after the group attacked an Israeli outpost.
BOGOTA - Marxist rebels ambushed a military convoy, killing eight soldiers and a civilian, in northeast Colombia in the latest phase of a campaign to stop weekend's congressional elections.
SEOUL - South Korea President Kim Dae-jung named Lee Kyu-sung, a university economics professor and former finance minister, to be Minister of Finance and Economy.
BONN - Germany's Helmut Kohl dismissed speculation that he should drop out as candidate for chancellor after a state election triumph by opposition nominee Gerhard Schroeder.
MOSCOW - Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed one of his most trusted allies, top security official Ivan Rybkin, as a deputy prime minister and removed his long-serving nuclear energy minister.
TUNIS - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi urged the United Nations Security Council to suspend sanctions imposed on Libya over the Lockerbie bombing, after the Internationsal Court of Justice made a favourable ruling for Libya.
PARIS - Algerian troops backed by planes have killed 100 Moslem rebels in the latest military operation centred on a mountainous area in western Algeria.
MOSCOW - Israeli trade and industry minister Natan Sharansky, once a leading dissident in the former Soviet Union, appealed to Russia to help stop Iran developing ballistic missiles.
ROME - The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said a warning from Pyongyang that the secretive Stalinist state was set to run out of food within two weeks confirmed that the food situation there was critical.
