JAKARTA - OPEC bigwigs meeting to decide the cartel`s 1998 production rested before talks on Friday on how much oil the world can absorb without tipping prices into freefall. Big Gulf Arab producers like Saudi Arabia want the OPEC to raise its ceiling to actual supply and permit them a share of growing world demand.
MOSCOW - President Boris Yeltsin, demanding that ministers make good on promises to improve Russia`s economic plight, sais he might make more changes in his government line-up next week. He, too, said he would visit Chechnya in January to size up the shattered economy and try to quell separatist tendencies in the rebel region.
ISLAMABAD - Demonstrators demanding the resignation of Pakistan`s chief justice forced the adjournment of a contempt of court hearing against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
WARSAW - Britain`s Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told a conference in Poland that European Union enlargement talks would start on March 31 next year.
MEXICO CITY - One of Mexico`s best-known crusading journalists was fighting for his life in a hospital after being shot in what authorities termed an apparent drug hit.
LONDON - Seven instructors from Britain`s top army academy are being investigated for allegedly taking bribes from overseas cadets.
JERUSALEM - The Palestinian Authority has spurned an offer by Israel`s Benjamin Netanyahu to fuse three long-promised Israeli West Bank troop pullbacks into one as part of his bid to launch fast-track talks on a final peace deal.
JOHANNESBURG - As the charges of murder and assault mount against President Mandela`s former wife Winnie, the South African truth commission probe into her apartheid-era activities looks set to outlast all its previous inquiries.
KINSHASA - Large numbers of troops were deployed on the west side of Kinshasa`s city centre after heavy shooting broke out near a military camp.
LUANDA - The Angolan military has taken control of a number of diamond mining towns held by the former rebel movement UNITA.
HARARE - The Zimbabwean parliament blocked a government bid to push through measures aimed at raising money from taxpayers to pay restive war veterans.
HARARE - A witness in the trial of veteran Zimbabwean opposition leader Ndabaningi Sithole said Sithole was involved in a plot to kill President Robert Mugabe in 1995.
SANAA - An American believed to have been the longest-held foreigner abducted by Yemeni tribesmen was freed on Thursday and had arrived safely in the capital.
TEHRAN - A foreigner linked to a Western embassy has been held in Iran on charges of sexually abusing 40 young women he had duped with false promises of visas and trips abroad.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi newspapers said Baghdad hoped that a decision to allow foreign experts to check presidential palaces for banned weapons would help to defuse its standoff with Washington. The United States insists that U.N. inspectors charged with ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction have unfettered access to sites, while the Baghdad government says some areas are off limits to the UNSCOM, though other foreign experts will be allowed to visit them.
ANKARA - Turkish judges weighed the fate of around 40 Islamist convicts facing sentencing on capital charges for their part in a 1993 riot in which dozens of people died.
ZURICH - Egypt is sending Foreign Minister Amr Moussa to attend Switzerland`s national mourning ceremony for tourists slain in the Luxor temple massacre.
JERUSALEM - Israel said Iranian mortar bombs were used in an attack that killed eight civilians in south Lebanon.
ANKARA - The husband of former Turkish prime minister Tansu Ciller went on trial on charges of falsifying documents given to a parliamentary anti-corruption commission.
