China
BEIJING -- The mouthpiece of the People's Liberation Army, furious over U.S. legislation to boost military ties with Taiwan, warned the United States not to mistake China for Yugoslavia.Germany
BONN -- Leaders of the opposition Christian Democrats met amid swirling speculation about the identity of secret donors who gave cash to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a slush fund scandal.
Saudi Arabia
DUBAI -- A Saudi man was beheaded in the southern province of Asir for shooting dead another Saudi man after a dispute, the official news agency SPA reported.
Greece
ATHENS -- Premier Costas Simitis called early elections in an apparent bid to take advantage of unprecedented economic advances that have brought the country, a former fiscal basket case, to the threshold of euro eligibility.
Ivory Coast
ABIDJAN -- Divers said they retrieved one of two flight information recorders from the wreckage of a Kenyan Airways jet which crashed off Ivory Coast last Sunday.
France
PARIS -- President Jacques Chirac and more than 100 cancer experts, officials, patients and advocacy groups from around the world signed a historic charter to forge global partnerships to fight the disease.
Lebanon
MARJAYOUN -- Israel's South Lebanon Army militia said it had abandoned a mountaintop outpost in south Lebanon that came under heavy Hezbollah attack.
Italy
ROME -- Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider has accepted a rabbi's challenge to visit a former Nazi death camp in Italy, an official said.
Japan
TOKYO -- Embattled Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi appealed to opposition parties to end their boycott of parliament and discuss his proposed huge budget that is seen as crucial to aiding economic recovery.
Belgium
BRUSSELS -- The Defense Ministry said it would cancel an order for six armored ambulances from an Austrian firm to protest against the entry of Austria's far-right Freedom Party into government.
Philippines
MANILA -- A Philippine navy patrol ship fired three warning shots near two Chinese fishing boats, warning that they should leave a shoal in the South China Sea, officials said. The fishing boats halted after the shots were fired and left the area after men on a rubber boat sent from the patrol ship instructed them to leave.
Turkey
ANKARA -- Turkey has shown selected journalists how Hezbollah militants throttled their scores of victims and urged the press to battle the radical Islamic sentiments behind the organization. In a presentation to journalists, Interior Minister Sadettin Tantan described Hezbollah, blamed for at least 56 murders, as a group founded on "ignorance."
Cambodia
PHNOM PENH -- Cambodia will soon begin to demobilize 31,500 members of its armed forces as part of long-term economic reform plans, government officials said.
India
SRINAGAR -- Three people were killed and six wounded in two separate incidents in India's strife-torn northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, police said.
Israel
JERUSALEM -- Israel's international airport was closed for four hours when striking workers stopped planes from taking off and refused to unload planes that landed during the walkout.