Refugees fleeing from fighting in eastern Sierra Leone were tortured and raped and are suffering from malnourishment and disease.
LAGOS - Thwarted Nigerian presidential aspirant Mohammed Yusufu has filed a legal challenge against his party for nominating military ruler General Sani Abacha as its presidential candidate.
NAIROBI - The head of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) will attend a regional summit in Kinshasa this weekend, coinciding with President Kabila`s first year in power.
NOUAKCHOTT - A Mauritanian military transport plane has crashed in the east of the country killing 39 people, including 22 members of president`s ceremonial army band. The Chinese-built Y7 crashed after take-off on Tuesday night from the town of Nema, President Sid`Ahmed Taya`s stronghold.
BELGRADE - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic invited ethnic Albanian separatist leader Ibrahim Rugova for peace talks in a breakthrough for U.S. mediation in the Kosovo crisis.
WASHINGTON - Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Washington for tough talks with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on reviving stalled peace talks.
JERUSALEM - Israeli police suspect a Jewish nationalist stabbed to death a 51-year-old Arab early in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
MANILA - Philippine presidential candidate Juan Ponce Enrile conceded victory to former actor Joseph Estrada, whom exit polls suggest was the winner in Monday`s election.
BAR ELIAS, Lebanon - Raids by Israeli warplanes killed up to 10 members of a radical Palestinian group.
COLOMBO - The leader of the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group warned of more fighting to come as the government`s bloodiest campaign against the rebels entered its second year.
BOGOTA - Gunmen killed a former Colombian defense minister in a crime authorities said was part of a "destabilization campaign" that highlighted the country`s endemic violence prior to elections on May 31.
MIAMI - About 160 suspected illegal immigrants from Haiti leaped off a freighter on the Miami River, setting off a mad scramble by U.S. agencies to capture as many as possible.
BERLIN - U.S. President Bill Clinton arrived in Berlin for a visit to Germany scheduled to include talks with Chancellor Helmut Kohl and celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military again failed to hit a missile with a missile at the edge of space, when its troubled "THAAD" anti-missile system suffered a fifth successive misfire.
BUENOS AIRES - The U.S. FBI will report its findings on a 1994 anti-Jewish bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 86 people to the Argentine government within a month.
WASHINGTON - A U.S. Court of Appeals sided with Microsoft Corp. by preventing a lower court decision issued late last year from interfering with the release of Windows 98.
NEW YORK - A self portrait by Andy Warhol sold at Christie`s New York for $2.4 million, the highest auction price ever paid for a self portrait by the famed pop artist.
ANKARA - Turkey`s leading human rights campaigner, Akin Birdal, regained consciousness after he was critically wounded in a gun attack blamed by his colleagues on ultra-rightist gangs.
Autor: edited by zuzana vilikovská
