MOSCOW - Russia‘s upper house of parliament began a closed-door extraordinary session on Friday devoted to efforts to boost security in a country reeling from a series of bomb blasts that have killed nearly 300 people.
NEW YORK - Hurricane Floyd belted the eastern U.S. on Thursday with fierce winds and torrential rains, killing seven people and causing widespread power outages and flooding from Florida to New England.
ALGIERS - Algerians have endorsed overwhelmingly President Abdelaziz Bouteflika‘s peace policies to pull their country out of seven years of civil strife.
BERLIN - The fractious left wing of Germany‘s ruling Social Democrats will buckle down and support Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder‘s austerity plan.
MOSCOW - Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who is looking increasingly isolated, was said on Friday to view as a misunderstanding a report that the influential speaker of the upper house of parliament wanted him to quit.
BERLIN - Leaders of Germany‘s Greens, junior coalition partners of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, could resign following a disastrous showing in regional elections.
GAZA - The radical Palestinian group PFLP said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to allow its deputy leader to return from exile but he reacted coolly to the move and said he remained opposed to the present peace process.
BAGHDAD - An authoritative Iraqi newspaper said on Thursday that aerial pictures issued by the United States and showing alleged the destruction of opposition areas by Iraqi forces were false and a sign of Washington‘s failed policy towards the Arab state.
MOGADISHU - An official of the United Nations children‘s agency UNICEF in Somalia has been ambushed and killed in one of the nation‘s most dangerous regions.
ATAMBUA, Indonesia - Pro-Jakarta militiamen have volunteered to fight and kill troops of the multinational force scheduled to arrive in devastated East Timor in the next few days.
HONG KONG - A Chinese court has turned down an appeal by two dissidents jailed for trying to set up mainland China‘s first opposition party.
KUALA LUMPUR - A Malaysian court trying former finance minister Anwar Ibrahim on a sex charge will reconvene next week following his hospitalisation for alleged arsenic poisoning.
LUSAKA - Zambia, whose economy is tottering under the weight of AIDS, said on Thursday that only massive debt relief could free the type of resources it requires to fight the epidemic.
BLOEMFONTEIN - A black officer went on a killing rampage at a South African military base on Thursday, shooting dead six white soldiers and a white civilian before he was gunned down by colleagues.
PRETORIA - A senior UNHCR official lambasted the developed world on Thursday for not paying enough attention to the refugee crisis crippling Africa, but played down any suggestions of racism. President Bill Clinton freed more than half-a-billion dollars on Thursday for victims of Hurricane Floyd and defended the mass evacuation of coastal areas in the Southeast, calling it a „terrific test.“
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to reinstate Lincoln Savings and Loan chief Charles Keating‘s state court convictions on charges that he defrauded thousands of investors in the collapse of the thrift.
