RAMBOUILLET, France - U.S. mediator Chris Hill returned to France on Wednesday after lengthy talks with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic which diplomats hoped would result in a breakthrough in Kosovo peace negotiations.

TASHKENT - Uzbek President Islam Karimov said "dark forces" tried to assassinate him on Tuesday with a series of bomb blasts that killed at least nine people, and he vowed to chop off the hands of those behind the attack.

NUUK - Greenland`s governing Social Democratic Siumut seems set to remain the biggest party in the home-rule parliament on the vast Arctic island, unofficial election results showed on Wednesday.

NEW YORK - The World Jewish Congress said on Tuesday it would extend its battle for Holocaust reparations to French banks and the French government, following a decision by leading German companies to set up a new Holocaust fund for victims of Nazi concentration camps and their heirs.

LONDON - Supporters of captured Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan ended demonstrations in the Hague and Sydney on Wednesday after his detention sparked a wave of violent protests in over 20 cities around the world.

CAMP LEJEUNE - An altimeter that should have warned a U.S. Marine pilot that his jet was flying too low seconds before it sheared a pair of lift cables killing 20 people, malfunctioned twice in tests conducted after the accident last year, anelectronics expert said.

HONG KONG - Some 150 young ethnic Uighurs were arrested and at least five wounded after a group of 300 clashed with police in the western China province of Xinjiang on February 12, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Wednesday.

BEIJING - Two international media rights groups said on Wednesday they welcomed the release of Chinese journalist Gao Yu and urged China to free 11 other imprisoned reporters.

ANKARA - Abdullah Ocalan`s separatist guerrillas said on Tuesday they would press on with their armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey despite the arrest and arrival in Turkey of their leader.

WASHINGTON - A Syrian deputy prime minister who praised an attack against the U.S. embassy in Damascus withdrew his comments after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright demanded a retraction, threatening to recall the U.S. ambassador.

ANKARA - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz denied on Tuesday that Iraq was threatening neighbouring countries hosting Western aircraft to launch strikes at Iraqi targets.

DALLAS - The union that represents pilots at American Airlines on Tuesday paid $10 million to a U.S. federal court in Dallas as a deposit on a fine for damages caused by a 10-day "sickout," court officials said.

NAIROBI - Just six months after a bomb attack killed 229 people in Nairobi, Kenya fears the capture of Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan could again bring it misery at the hands of foreign radicals.

KINSHASA - A U.N. human rights investigator once declared "persona non grata" by President Laurent Kabila for denouncing massacres of refugees arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Tuesday.

ASSAB, Eritrea - Ethiopia and Eritrea traded artillery fire along their contested frontier on Tuesday afternoon and Ethiopian planes dropped bombs on a water reservoir close to Eritrea`s Red Sea port of Assab.