NIAMEY - Niger`s agriculture minister Idi Ango Omar repeated an appeal for food aid, telling parliament that promises of assistance from developed countries had largely failed to materialise.
JAKARTA - New President Jusuf Habibie appeared to have won some of the time he was looking for to stabilise troubled Indonesia, but the pressure on him remained intense from both inside his cabinet and outside the country.
BUDAPEST - A bomb at a political party office and social club in Budapest injured two people shortly before voting began in Hungary`s general election. Hungary`s voters were choosing whether to give the ruling Socialists four more years in power or opt for change with their centre-right challengers.
SEOUL - South Korea is sinking into a long, full-blown economic recession with domestic consumption and investment evaporating.
ABU DHABI - Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries President Obeid bin Saif al-Nasseri said he was optimistic that oil prices would recover in the long run.
ANKARA - Turkish security forces killed 23 Kurdish rebels in four separate clashes in the southeast of the country over the weekend.
HONG KONG - Hong Kong voted in dreadful weather in the first legislative elections since Beijing resumed control, a poll hailed by leading democrat Martin Lee as a small step towards democracy in mainland China.
BEIRUT - Lebanese began voting in the country`s first local elections in 35 years amid tight security in a race that could escalate tensions between the country`s sects.
DAKAR - Polls opened slowly in Senegal in general elections. Residents reported a huge security force presence in the separatist southern province of Casamance, where rebel violence erupted on the eve of the vote.
CAIRO - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo for talks on deadlocked Middle East peace efforts.
Egypt hanged two brothers for killing nine German tourists and their Egyptian bus driver in a gun and firebomb attack in September.
KANANASKIS, Alberta - The U.S. Treasury Department is investigating whether the United States broke Mexican laws in a probe of and sting against alleged drug-money launderers,
MANAGUA - Daniel Ortega was renamed secretary-general of the Nicaraguan Sandinista Front he has led for nearly 20 years and pledged to listen to new voices in the party while sticking to its revolutionary principles.
ATHENS - Greek riot police stormed the main computer centre of the state Ionian Bank, ending a two-week occupation by employees protesting against a government decision to sell the bank.
TBILISI - Hundreds of refugees fled new fighting in Georgia`s breakaway Abkhazia region amid the worst clashes between Abkhaz fighters and Georgian irregulars in five years.
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. - Police sifted through an array of explosives in the home of an Oregon teen-ager charged with killing two students and injuring 22 in a school shooting rampage, as two critically wounded victims clung to life.
BARCELONA - NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said that new talks to try to resolve the conflict in the Serbian province of Kosovo were promising but lacked a crucial element - international mediation.
NEW DELHI - India rebutted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif`s criticism of its nuclear tests and said they should not hamper confidence-building measures with China and Pakistan.
KARACHI, Pakistan - Pakistani police prevented 35 Britons from leaving the plant of a foreign-owned power company that has been at the centre of a row with the government over rates.
