SIERRA LEONE
FREETOWN -- Sierra Leone said Friday it had pardoned and freed 98 former ministers and officials jailed for their role in a military junta that supplanted President Ahmad Tejan Kebbah for nine months after a 1997 coup.
GREECE
ATHENS -- Authorities arrested a Turkish man Friday after he paddled from the Turkish coast to a Greek island on an inflatable mattress, local media said, amid a nationwide police crackdown on illegal immigration.
BELARUS
MINSK -- Belarus authorities have released several dozen people arrested for taking part in a protest against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, but most still must stand trial, human rights activists said Friday.
SINGAPORE
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been badly hurt by the region's financial crisis and must rebuild its strength and vision, the organization's foreign ministers said Friday.
NIGERIA
LAGOS -- Ethnic rioting that began in southwestern Nigeria has spread to the northern town of Kano, killing at least three people, police said Friday.
SOUTH AFRICA
JOHANNESBURG -- Two brothers passing themselves off as the same man were caught cheating in a long-distance race after a newspaper published photos showing them wearing watches on opposite wrists.
BANGLADESH
MAHESHKHALI -- Rescue workers Friday found the bodies of two more victims killed when an earthquake shook a small fishing island off the Bangladeshi coast, demolishing homes and pounding low-lying areas with crashing waves.
RUSSIA
MOSCOW -- Russia will see no economic growth in the next decade unless it is able to reschedule foreign debt payments nearly equal to the country's expected revenues, a top official was quoted as saying Friday.
KENYA
NAIROBI -- The Sudanese government and southern rebels agreed Friday to boost efforts to negotiate an end to 16 years of fighting, then reiterated the positions that have kept them divided.
NAIROBI -- Under pressure from donors to straighten out Kenya's economic mess, President Daniel arap Moi made key changes in his administration Friday, putting paleontologist Richard Leakey in charge of the civil service.
TAIWAN
TAIPEI -- Two weeks after an assertion of Taiwanese statehood that enraged Beijing and sent U.S. officials rushing to avert a crisis, Taiwan's president offered assurances Friday his policy on reunification with China hasn't changed.
ARGENTINA
BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine government officials would be wise to delay planned visits to the Falkland Islands following a new air link accord with Britain because of hostile feelings among some islanders, the islands' governor said in remarks published Friday.
CANADA
VANCOUVER -- Indian leaders say their bid to win an apology for past discrimination in the United States will be boosted by an agreement Friday between U.S. and Canadian tribes to co-ordinate political activities.
UNITED NATIONS
Bosnia is turning into an "El Dorado of organized crime" with foreign women forced into prostitution and police and judges too corrupt to stop it, the U.N. envoy for the Balkan nation said on Friday.