Yugoslavia
PANTINA - Albanian arms smugglers and Yugoslav troops traded fire at several border points, leaving at least two smugglers dead, according to Serb reports. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
China
BEIJING - Dissident Chen Zengxiang who was detained nearly seven weeks ago has been formally charged and barred from seeing his lawyer, a group of exiled democracy campaigners said.
Azores
HORTA - About 1,700 minor aftershocks have rumbled through Portugal's Azores Islands since a magnitude-5.8 quake killed eight people and left 1,500 homeless.
France
LYON - A Paris-bound plane with 85 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing in this southeastern city after the control tower received an anonymous threat warning that a bomb had been planted on board.
Japan
TOKYO - The government has begun installing solar- and wind-driven generators as backup in case of power outages from major earthquakes like the one that devastated the city of Kobe in 1995.
Spain
MADRID - Disgruntled airport workers, who six weeks ago paralyzed Spanish airports with a work stoppage, said they would strike at the busiest time of the year if they get no progress on pay demands.
India
NEW DELHI - Envoys from India and the United States ended two days of talks in Frankfurt on nuclear arms and other issues, and agreed to meet again in New Delhi on July 20-21, Press Trust of India said.
New Zealand
WELLINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will visit New Zealand next month, New Zealand Foreign Minister Don McKinnon said.
Turkey
ANKARA - The government will go ahead with plans to build its first nuclear power plant despite concern by environmentalists that it may be situated in an earthquake zone, the energy minister said.
Japan
TOKYO - The ruling party lowered its sights for Sunday's Upper House election, saying if it can hold on to its 61 seats up for grabs, it would accept the result as a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's economic policies.
Germany
BONN - Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek tried to calm a row over calls to compensate ethnic Germans expelled from Poland after World War II.
South Korea
SEOUL - The trial of the nation's former economic tsars began Friday, with the prosecution blaming them for the financial crisis that has devastated what was once the world's 11th largest economy.
England
LONDON - Opposition parties accused the government of watering down its pledge to ban land mines, saying a proposed new law was inconsistent with the Ottawa Convention it signed last year.
Nigeria
LAGOS - American oil firm Conoco has struck a huge oil field in Nigerian deep waters, a local newspaper reported.
Lebanon
BEIRUT - The nation's military prosecutor has charged 18 members of an outlawed right-wing Christian militia with carrying out a 1996 bus bombing in Syria that killed 11 people, a security source said.