TOKYO - Chinese President Jiang Zemin started a historic visit to Japan looking for a 21st century partnership between Asia`s economic and military giants.
ANKARA - Turkey eased its insistence that Italy should hand over Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan for trial on treason charges.
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing political needs at home, cancelled a one-day trip to Switzerland that was meant to patch up a dispute over Holocaust-era restitution by Swiss banks.
HYDERABAD, Pakistan - Two bomb blasts in the Pakistani town of Hyderabad killed one person and wounded seven, three of them seriously.
BELFAST - British Prime Minister Blair was due to launch crucial talks to try to rescue Northern Ireland`s Good Friday peace agreement as the province`s leaders escalated a war of words.
TEHRAN - Iran has said it will find and punish the killers of veteran opposition leader Dariush Forouhar and his wife Parvaneh.
TALAYAN, Philippines - One girl was killed and 15 people were wounded in three days of fighting between Philippine troops and Moslem separatists.
HARARE - A row over the seizure of private farms by the government last week is likely to scuttle Zimbabwe`s chances of receiving vital aid from the IMF next month.
WASHINGTON - Microsoft`s top lawyer called on the government to drop its antitrust case in light of America Online`s agreement to buy Netscape, and will later seek a dismissal from the judge.
Several Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said they intend to offer a resolution to censure U.S. President Bill Clinton rather than impeach him, giving Congress an option short of removing the president from office.
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno decided not to seek an independent counsel to investigate alleged political fund-raising abuses by Vice President Al Gore, rejecting the evidence as "insubstantial."
BELGRADE - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has sacked the chief of the Yugoslav Army, General Momcilo Perisic.
VIENNA - OPEC producers gathered for their winter conference stunned at the extent of a price crash the oil cartel appears powerless to resist.
MOSCOW - Boris Yeltsin was in a stable condition with pneumonia in a Moscow hospital as the rest of Russia`s anti-Communist elite gathered in St Petersburg to mourn murdered liberal matriarch Galina Starovoitova.
NEW YORK - U.S. District Court judges sentenced one man involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to 10 months in jail and another to 8 years.
KARACHI - Two Colombian anti-terrorist experts helping Karachi authorities combat violence got a taste of the city`s problem when gunmen opened fire on the armoured police car in which they were riding.
LAGOS - Nigeria`s military rulers are moving closer to a tough decision to raise official fuel prices to try to end crippling shortages in Africa`s biggest oil producer.
FREETOWN - Rebels in northern Sierra Leone have demanded a satellite telephone and medical supplies from Italy as ransom for an Italian priest abducted 10 days ago.
KINSHASA - Congolese radio said forces loyal to President Laurent Kabila had killed up to 600 rebels aboard boats on Lake Tanganyika and had been fighting his opponents round the eastern town of Kongolo.
ANKARA - Turkey eased its insistence that Italy should hand Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan to Ankara for trial on treason charges in a move likely to defuse tension between the two countries.
