EGYPT
CAIRO -- An Iraqi opposition group said Wednesday that a half brother of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been granted political asylum in the United Arab Emirates.CAIRO -- Three senior police officers in the Suez Canal city of Port Said will be investigated and moved to other posts following this week's attack on President Hosni Mubarak, newspapers reported Wednesday.
JAPAN
TOKYO -- A man with a knife slashed two women to death and injured six other passers-by on a Tokyo street, police said Wednesday. Hiroshi Zoda, 23, told police he attacked people at random because he was frustrated that he couldn't find a job, police said.
RUSSIA
MOSCOW -- Writer and human rights activist Lev Razgon, who spent 17 years in Soviet labor camps, died Wednesday of a heart attack at age 92, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
MOSCOW -- Russian troops fighting Islamic rebels in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan said they had gained ground in the past 24 hours after President Boris Yeltsin told generals to crush the rebels.
PAKISTAN
ISLAMABAD -- Opponents of Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban government said Wednesday that 19 children drowned in a swollen river while trying to escape fighting in the nation's civil conflict.
INDIA
MADRAS -- India's Election Commission has reprimanded a movie star-turned-politician for allegedly violating campaign rules by going on television to talk politics within 24 hours of an election.
CHINA
HONG KONG -- China has detained a member of an outlawed pro-democracy party, the fifth such detention in about a week, a Hong Kong-based rights group said Wednesday.
BEIJING -- Three gangsters were shot dead by police in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou after car bombings in two supermarket car parks, Chinese newspapers reported Wednesday.
ISRAEL
JERUSALEM -- Israel arrested two more Israeli Arabs in connection with botched back-to-back car bombings in northern Israel this week, bringing the total arrested to seven Israeli Arabs, police said on Wednesday.
THAILAND
BANGKOK -- A 28-year-old British woman arrested for protesting against Myanmar's military rulers in central Yangon was questioned by authorities Wednesday, but diplomats were not allowed to see her, the British embassy said.
ENGLAND
LONDON -- The leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans warned the British government Wednesday it could not impose morality after Prime Minister Tony Blair called for Britain's high teenage pregnancy rate to be cut.
NIGERIA
LAGOS -- At least 20 people, including a police officer, were killed when armed bandits attacked a bus in northern Nigeria, local newspapers said Wednesday.
FRANCE
PARIS -- French mayors have decided to celebrate the millennium by choosing one of the country's most beautiful women to be the new Marianne, the female figure representing the French Republic.
CZECH REPUBLIC
PRAGUE -- Dozens, maybe hundreds, of bats have invaded a regional police headquarters in a northern Bohemian town, making night shifts especially unpleasant for officers.