Kenya
NAIROBI - At least 54 people were killed in central Kenya when a bus plunged off a bridge into a river in the country's worst bus accident in recent years.
South Africa
CAPE TOWN - Former President P.W. Botha still is refusing to appear before a commission investigating apartheid-era atrocities, despite the start of prosecution for contempt, a newspaper reported.
Israel
JERUSALEM - The government will reveal the extent of a West Bank troop pullback before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Clinton in two weeks - but will not carry out the handover for several months, according to broadcast re-ports.
Cambodia
PHNOM PENH - The Information Ministry ordered six pro-opposition newspapers closed after they published articles critical of the government. The ministry's secretary of state, Khieu Kanharith, ordered the immediate seizure of all previously published and future editions of the news-papers.
Canada
MONTREAL - Quebec residents filled emergency shelters or shivered at home, trying to stay warm in a new ice storm that left 800,000 households without power.
Mongolia
ULAN BATOR - Hysteria over AIDS swept the nation after reports that an infected African man may have slept with four local prostitutes.
Poland
WARSAW - The country's new parliament, dominated by center-right parties, ratified a controversial treaty with the Vatican that had been stalled for four years by the previous leftist legislature. The agreement governs relations between the state and the Roman Catholic Church.
Greece
ATHENS - About 30 Turkish jet fighters violated Greek airspace over the Aegean Sea and were intercepted by Greek forces, a government spokesman said.
Nepal
KATMANDU - The main opposition group said it had called for a special session of parliament to debate a no-confidence motion against the 3-month-old government of Prime Minister Surya Ba-ha-dur Thapa.
Zimbabwe
HARARE - U.S. black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan praised Zimbabwe's controversial land reforms, saying they would ensure justice for the majority.
China
BEIJING - Authorities in the northwestern province of Qing-hai have sent grain, gasoline and diesel to areas where heavy snowfalls have killed livestock and threatened nomadic herdsmen.
France
PARIS - Prime Minister Lionel Jospin scrambled to regain lost ground after agreeing to meet leaders of the grass-roots unemployment protests that have cornered his left-wing government.
China
HONG KONG - The government slammed the door shut on future refugees when it scrapped a 19-year-old policy that has been used by hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese "boat people" to flee their country.
Italy
ROME - Gay rights groups are warning homosexuals in Rome to be on guard, saying the killing of a nobleman who belonged to the Vatican protocol corps raises the prospect of a serial killer.