MOSCOW - Russian President Boris Yeltsin has dismissed Yevgeny Yasin, acting minister without portfolio and a long-time government adviser on the economy, from the cabinet.

TOKYO - Parliament formally named ruling party leader Keizo Obuchi as Japan‘s new prime minister after a delay of several hours caused by a symbolic show of force by the opposition.

SANAHA - Yemeni police arrested a man for throwing a hand grenade into a market in the southern port city of Aden, slightly injuring eight people.

ATHENS - Greek and Turkish soldiers exchanged fire in a border shootout on the banks of a river dividing the two countries but nobody was injured.

BEIJING - China is stepping up efforts to head off epidemics across its water-logged heartland as the economic toll from flooding along the Yangtze River nears $5.0 billion.

KIGALI - The Rwandan army says the last of its troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have arrived home after authorities in Kinshasa ordered them to leave.

ACAPULCO, Mexico - Presumed Marxist rebels attacked a police convoy in Mexico‘s western state of Guerrero, killing one and wounding several others.

KINSHASA - The Democratic Republic of the Congo has warned its citizens against a witch-hunt of ethnic Tutsis following the withdrawal of Rwandan Tutsi troops from the capital.

WASHINGTON - An international food delivery programme to bring aid to victims of war, drought and famine in Sudan will be the largest in history, exceeding the Berlin Airlift.

WARRI, Nigeria - At least one person has been shot dead by police in the southern Nigerian town of Warri in a fracas over compensation money for a Mobil Corp oil spill.

SIEM REAP, Cambodia - Cambodian leader Hun Sen, whose ruling Cambodian People‘s Party party looks set to win the weekend general election, proposed a three-way coalition with two rival parties.

BELGRADE - European Union envoys are due to meet Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to push for talks to defuse the Kosovo conflict, as the tide turns against ethnic Albanian separatists on the battlefield.

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday opens a special high-level conference on Sierra Leone‘s future that human rights groups hope will focus on punishing rebels responsible for maiming, raping and murdering innocent Sierra Leoneans.

NIAMEY - Parliament in Niger has passed a law giving the interior minister sweeping powers to declare a state of emergency in the West African country.

UNITED NATIONS - Russia proposed a Security Council resolution saying Iraq had complied with demands to destroy its nuclear arms facilities, and thereby immediately split the 15-member body.

DHAKA - Life in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka was severely disrupted on Thursday by an opposition-led general strike to protest against the death of a student in police custody.

UNITED NATIONS - Russia has proposed a Security Council resolution saying Iraq has complied with demands to destroy its nuclear arms facilities, and has thereby split the 15-member body.

TEHRAN - Twelve people were injured in an accidental explosion at a Tehran bank. Wednesday‘s blast was caused by an explosive cocktail of detergent and petrol which blew up in high temperatures as workers cleaned the central heating section of the four-storey Bank Saderat building.