BRUSSELS - Coca-Cola said it would refund the medical costs of Belgian consumers who became ill after drinking its products as the government considered whether to allow Coca-Cola sales to resume.
BEIJING - China rejected U.S. envoy Thomas Pickering‘s explanation that the bombing of Beijing‘s embassy in Belgrade was a tragic mistake caused by a series of intelligence blunders.
CZESTOCHOWA, Poland - Pope John Paul on Thursday joined 250,000 pilgrims in prayer before Poland‘s holiest icon, winding up his gruelling tour of his native land with moments of deep religious reflection.
NAIROBI - Twenty-four American tourists were robbed at gunpoint in Kenya, with three briefly taken hostage along with their driver outside the world famous Maasai Mara wildlife reserve. All 24 escaped unhurt.
COLOGNE, Germany - Leaders of the Group of Seven rich democracies aim to ease the debt burden on the world‘s poorest countries and calm Russia‘s anger over the Kosovo crisis at a meeting starting in Germany on Friday.
KIGALI - Rwanda said it was unlikely that a ceasefire deal to end fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo would be signed next week in the Zambian capital Lusaka.
WASHINGTON - Exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and his followers, blamed by the United States for last year‘s embassy bombings in Africa, may be close to conducting a "terrorist attack" .
MADRID - The Spanish judge seeking to prosecute Chile‘s Augusto Pinochet has started to investigate 36 new cases of people who were allegedly tortured or disappeared under the former dictator.
LONDON - A leading Irish Republican Army intelligence officer who secretly worked as an agent for the British security forces during the Northern Irish conflict was shot and badly wounded.
JOWHAR, Somalia - Somali warlord Hussein Aideed has flown a huge batch of newly printed local banknotes into the country, a fresh tactic in the fight for supremacy among Somalia‘s numerous rival factions.
STOCKHOLM - The family of reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo respected her wish to be alone to the very end when they secretly buried her ashes in a Stockholm cemetery the day before a public memorial service on Thursday.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - Turkish troops have killed 21 Kurdish rebels loyal to Abdullah Ocalan and lost four of their own men in fighting in the southeast of the country.
PARIS - French President Jacques Chirac told U.S. President Bill Clinton that a British proposal to suspend the U.N. oil embargo against Iraq was pointless because Baghdad would reject the terms.
U.S. President Bill Clinton said he saw no need for a fresh personal effort to revive the Middle East peace process and that he expected the parties involved to restart the talks on their own.
KHARTOUM - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi begins a three-day visit to Sudan on Friday during which he will have talks with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that "developing imbalances" posed risks to the long-run health of the U.S. economy, leaving the door open to a modest rise in key interest rates.
