ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said parliamentary rebels were doomed to fail in an attempt on Monday to topple him and postpone April elections.

JERUSALEM - Israeli planes blasted suspected guerrilla targets in south Lebanon on Monday for the second time in two days.

HELSINKI - Finland‘s Social Democratic Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen looked poised to stay in power after staging a dramatic comeback in Sunday‘s general elections.

BONN - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder supports the appointment of former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi as head of the European Commission.

LONDON - Police said on Monday they expected substantial numbers of British truckers to arrive in London at around 1000 GMT to protest a government increase in diesel duty and road tax.

MOSCOW - Gunmen sprayed the car of a deputy governor of Russia‘s Siberian region of Omsk with automatic rifle fire outside his home on Monday morning, wounding him and killing his driver.

TEL AVIV - Israel charged U.S. Jewish teenager Samuel Sheinbein on Monday with premeditated murder in the 1997 killing and dismemberment of another youth in the United States.

MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov discussed economic cooperation and Middle East peace on Monday with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu.

KARRATHA, Australia - A tropical cyclone whipping up violent winds battered Australia‘s northwest coast on Monday, destroying buildings in a small fishing town and bringing widespread flooding.

KUALA LUMPUR - Lawyers for sacked Malaysian finance minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday they wanted the judge in his corruption trial to consider standing down before they would take their case any further.

SEOUL - South Korea‘s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Monday Seoul‘s policy of engagement with North Korea needed "confidence and patience" to succeed.

BUENOS AIRES - Voters choosing a governor in a poor province of northwestern Argentina on Sunday apparently shook President Carlos Menem‘s hopes of winning a third term this year.

MEXICO CITY - Mexicans cast votes on Sunday in a non-binding plebiscite on Indian rights seeking to end centuries of misery for indigenous people and revive a flagging guerrilla movement fighting on their behalf.

LOS ANGELES - Monica Lewinsky was spicy material for jokes at the Academy Awards on Sunday, but that did not stop the woman at the center of the White House sex-and-perjury scandal from hitting the Oscars party circuit.

KARRATHA, Australia - A tropical cyclone with destructive winds up to 290 km an hour (180 miles an hour) battered Australia‘s northwest coast on Monday, destroying buildings and causing widespread flooding.

WASHINGTON - Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Sunday defended security for U.S. nuclear arms research, describing some reports about Chinese spying as unfounded hysteria.

ROME - Chinese President Jiang Zemin began a visit to Italy expected to talk up trade ties and play down human rights issues, but was instantly confronted with protesters decrying Beijing‘s policy on Tibet.

GROZNY, Russia - The president of Russia‘s breakaway republic of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, narrowly survived an assassination attempt on Sunday when an explosion occurred near his motorcade.

EDITED BY ZUZANA VILIKOVSKÁ