Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Indonesia's former military chief General Wiranto brushed aside again on Wednesday an order to quit the cabinet, insisting he would wait for President Abdurrahman Wahid's return this weekend to discuss the issue.
Romania
BUCHAREST -- Ion Gheorghe Maurer, Romania's first communist premier, has died of heart and kidney failure at the age of 97.
Hungary
BUDAPEST -- Wednesday, a Jewish-Hungarian heiress living in the U.S. won a round in a court battle to recover artworks looted by the Nazis and now hanging in Hungarian museums.
Egypt
CAIRO -- A state-owned Egyptian newspaper on Wednesday accused an EgyptAir pilot who has sought asylum in Britain of being a "cheap tool" used by U.S. interest groups to cover up the real cause of last year's EgyptAir crash.
Azerbaijan
BAKU -- Azerbaijan's President Haydar Aliyev is to travel to the United States Saturday for talks with President Clinton expected to focus on Azerbaijan's territorial dispute with neighboring Armenia.
Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia's prime minister will be called to the witness stand in the sex trial of former Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim, defense lawyers said Wednesday.
Iran
TEHRAN -- In a pointed show of solidarity, Iran's moderate president has apologized to candidates who were disqualified by a hard-line election body from this month's parliamentary polls.
Russia
MOSCOW -- Scores of children were hospitalized in a southern Russian region after eating salmonella-tainted food in a kindergarten cafeteria, officials said Wednesday.
Mozambique
MAPUTO -- South Africa said on Wednesday it was providing emergency relief to neighboring Mozambique, where floods have isolated cities and left 100,000 people needing aid.
Philippines
MANILA -- Philippine police shot and killed four alleged Hong Kong drug traffickers in a gunbattle in a Manila street early on Wednesday.
Cyprus
NICOSIA -- Turkish troops in northern Cyprus exchanged fire with three men during the night near the "green line" dividing the island's two rival communities.
Sri Lanka
COLOMBO -- Three people were killed and at least 47 injured, six seriously, when bombs exploded in two buses.
Pakistan
KARACHI -- Pakistani authorities have detained a Kashmiri militant, one of three freed from an Indian jail in December to end an eight-day hijack drama.
China
BEIJING -- Chinese police are threatening to seize the home of an elderly man whose son was detained trying to distribute foreign aid to families of those massacred near Tiananmen Square in 1989, a human rights group said on Wednesday.
Kazakhstan
ASTANA -- Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will begin talks on the sensitive issue of marking out their common border Thursday, Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrisov said Wednesday.
Vatican
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II plans to beatify more than 30 people as martyrs of the Catholic Church in a ceremony next month, the Vatican said Wednesday.
Oman
MUSCAT -- A Russian tanker detained by the U.S. Navy for allegedly smuggling Iraqi oil in violation of U.N. sanctions will begin unloading its cargo in an Omani port on Thursday.