Jordan
AMMAN - Jordanians voted Tuesday for a new parliament that is expected to be dominated by royalist tribal leaders who traditionally maintain King Hussein's absolute control over this Arab nation.
Cambodia
PHNOM PENH - Co-Premier Hun Sen left the country for Japan where he is expected to face strong pressure to allow ousted co-premier Prince Norodom Ranariddh to participate in general elections.
Bangladesh
DHAKA - An opposition-led general strike brought the capital to a virtual stand-still on Tuesday, and witnesses reported violent clashes between party followers.
Afghanistan
KABUL - Hundreds of civil servants who had distinguished themselves under the country's former communist regime are being purged by Kabul's Islamic Taleban rulers, members of the service said.
Nigeria
LAGOS - The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People plans a week of rallies and other events to mark the 1995 hanging of author Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists, local newspapers reported.
China
HONG KONG - The prospects for fair elections in Hong Kong next year are bleak, National Democratic Institute, an influential American think-tank, said in a report.
Hungary
BUDAPEST - A new opinion poll on Hungary's NATO membership to be published later this week ahead of a referendum Nov. 16 shows support is growing for NATO membership but the turn-out could be low.
Israel
JERUSALEM - Ariel Sharon lost a libel case against a newspaper that reported the late prime minister Menachem Begin had felt the former general misled him over the planned scope of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
United Arab Emirates
ABU DHABI - The government has no plans to attend a controversial regional conference in Doha this month unless tangible progress was made in Israeli-Arab peace talks, a UAE minister was quoted as saying.
England
LONDON - Test tube births in Britain rose by more than 25 percent in the last year, reflecting a growing number of patients and an increased success rate, a government body said.
Japan
TOKYO - A man taking part in a sushi-eating contest choked to death after downing three rolls of rice wrapped in seaweed, police said.
France
PARIS - Dominique Noguez won the prestigious Femina literary prize for his novel about the suffering that comes with love, and Philippe Le Guillou earned the Medicis prize for a book describing the life of a contemporary artist.
Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR - Southeast Asian nations suffering from smog created by Indonesian wildfires were reported to be planning a meeting next month to discuss a regional plan to fight future blazes.
Bulgaria
SOFIA - The nation risks losing its diverse forests because of loopholes in a bill before parliament that aims to return woodland collectivized under communist rule to its original owners, the Academy of Sciences said.
The Netherlands
AMSTERDAM - Police said 130 suspects had been rounded up in an international operation to smash six drugs rings.