SIERRA LEONE
FREETOWN -- At least 150 people drowned at sea off Sierra Leone when an overloaded motorized canoe capsized while carrying them home after they fled fighting, a union official and survivors said.ISRAEL
JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has asked the United States to submit a formal proposal for postponing a Palestinian declaration of statehood and setting a new deadline for a final peace agreement with Israel, a senior PLO official said.
RWANDA
KIGALI -- The nation takes a tentative step toward democratic rule next week with its first nationwide local elections since the country's brutal 1994 genocide. The polls, set for next Monday and Wednesday, will replace appointed local leaders with 10-member elected committees.
ALGERIA
ALGIERS -- The nation's seven presidential hopefuls began a three-week campaign for the April 15 election, all promising to pull the country out of seven years of civil strife and cure the tattered economy.
CHINA
HONG KONG -- A decision by the territory's top bureaucrat, Anson Chan, to put off retirement until mid-2002 is seen as a confidence-booster for Hong Kong as it struggles with its toughest economic challenge in decades.
TURKEY
ISTANBUL -- Unidentified snipers shot dead a military policeman in Istanbul after luring his team into a trap, Anatolian news agency said. It said the assailants had opened fire after calling the officers, on traffic duty, to a false car crash.
KENYA
NAIROBI -- Thirty-two people died in a train crash in southeast Kenya, including one French woman, police said. The runaway train carrying 614 people, including 70 foreigners, to the coastal port of Mombasa, jumped its tracks before dawn on Wednesday.
MONGOLIA
ULAN BATOR -- Police said they had released the wife of murdered democracy activist and minister Sanjaasurengiin Zorig two weeks after she was arrested as a suspect in his killing.
INDONESIA
JAKARTA -- President B.J. Habibie planned to give restive Aceh province a message during a one-day visit Friday and may apologize for past abuses, State Secretary Akbar Tandjung said.
PHILIPPINES
MANILA -- The government brushed aside Chinese protests and defended its air force reconnaissance flights over the disputed Spratlys in the South China Sea.
VIETNAM
HANOI -- Prominent Vietnam dissident monk Thich Quang Do said he had been detained and questioned for allegedly trying to establish an illegal Buddhist organization.
JAPAN
TOKYO -- Police said they had arrested 69 suspected illegal immigrants who apparently entered Japan on a ship of unknown origin that slipped undetected into a fishing port overnight.
TAIWAN
TAIPEI -- The heads of 18 Buddhist statues that were hacked out of their clay torsos in a Chinese temple five years ago were returned to Chinese officials.
EGYPT
CAIRO -- The nation's top cleric has ruled that belly dancers and actresses should not perform hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage, unless they quit show business, a newspaper reported.