ROME - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, on his first state visit to the West, said Iran would help stop the spread of nuclear arms and set out his vision for a new millennium based on dialogue and equality among nations.
SAN SALVADOR - Senior U.S. officials are working hard to dodge criticism over charges that President Bill Clinton dragged his feet in investigating allegations that China stole U.S. secrets for making reduced-size nuclear weapons.
KUALA LUMPUR - The judge in the criminal trial of Malaysia‘s sacked finance minister Anwar Ibrahim on Wednesday issued his third gag order, ordering the media not to report the names of individuals cited by a defence witness.
RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil‘s government won an important victory in Congress early when the lower house passed a bill raising a financial transactions tax — a key measure in its anti-crisis austerity plan.
LONDON - Northern Ireland leader David Trimble said he was "intensely disappointed" that Wednesday‘s handover of home rule powers had been postponed and called on the IRA to save the peace process by handing in its arms.
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia - Defying a Western envoy‘s decision to sack him, Bosnian Serb ultra-nationalist leader Nikola Poplasen vowed to continue acting as president of the country‘s Serb entity.
PARIS - French bank BNP has launched a surprise bid to gobble up rivals Paribas and Societe Generale, a pair of financial institutions that had already agreed to merge with each other.
KUALA LUMPUR - A woman who accused Anwar Ibrahim of sex crimes spoke to Daim Zainuddin, a confidant of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, from London three months before the former minister was sacked, a court was told on Wednesday.
JAKARTA - Two home-made bombs exploded and 10 houses were set ablaze in fresh clashes between Christians and Moslems on Indonesia‘s riot-scarred island of Ambon.
TUNCELI, Turkey - Turkish troops killed five of Abdullah Ocalan‘s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas for the loss of one soldier in clashes in the east of the country overnight.
JERUSALEM - A 21-year-old Israeli-Arab woman won the Jewish state‘s most prized beauty contest.
WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress are searching for ways to pay for a small tax cut in election year 2000, hoping to win over voters without touching the surplus for Social Security.
QUITO - Ecuadoran unions start a two-day general strike on Wednesday to protest the austerity measures of the government, which has declared a state of emergency.
FREETOWN - Detained rebel leader Foday Sankoh, speaking to his fighters by radio, has called for an immediate ceasefire in Sierra Leone‘s civil war as a prelude to preliminary peace talks, witnesses said.
GAZA - A Palestinian security court on Wednesday sentenced to death a member of the militant Islamic group Hamas after convicting him of killing a Palestinian police officer.
CAPE TOWN - Three members of the fledgling United Democratic Movement (UDM) were shot dead near Cape Town on Monday and Tuesday, taking to five the death toll less than a week into South Africa‘s election campaign.
