DAKAR - Dakar, capital of Senegal, sweltered without electricity after hot weather demand for air conditioning overwhelmed the city`s old power stations.
TOKYO - Japan`s ruling party suddenly put off by three days a vote to decide a new prime minister after a bruising fight broke out for the post.
MOSCOW - Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in a typically abrupt change of tack, decided to attend Friday`s burial ceremony for the last Russian tsar and his family, murdered by Bolsheviks 80 years ago this month.
JERUSALEM - The Tel Aviv District Court jailed an Israeli businessman for 16 years for selling poison gas materials to Iran in a case of treason and intrigue that has gripped Israel.
BEIJING - A group of 100 dissidents urged Chinese leaders to free five activists detained for trying to register an opposition political party.
Chinese prosecutors have indicted former Beijing Communist Party boss Chen Xitong on charges of corruption and dereliction of duty.
JAKARTA - Indonesia reached a watershed in efforts to resuscitate its battered economy, winning promises of extra international funding and an agreement in principle to reschedule its sovereign debt mountain.
ALGIERS - Moslem rebels cut the throats of 13 people and wounded two others overnight at a village in the province of Tiaret, 220 km southwest of Algiers.
PARIS - French Jewish groups will greet Syrian President Hafez al-Assad with a protest outside the Syrian embassy to demand that his country hands over a notorious Nazi war criminal they believe is in Damascus.
JOHANNESBURG - A South African newspaper said President Nelson Mandela would wed his sweetheart Graca Machel on his 80th birthday on Saturday, but a presidential spokeswoman said she was unaware of any nuptials.
WASHINGTON - A legal battle over whether President Bill Clinton`s bodyguards should testify on the White House sex scandal flared into open political warfare after the chief of Clinton`s security detail received a subpoena from independent counsel Kenneth Starr.
TORONTO - Police said they arrested a "superstar" of the underworld and eight other members of an alleged major crime family in Canada, effectively smashing the world`s largest drug smuggling and money laundering ring.
LOS ANGELES - Claims by two teenagers that they plan to lose their virginity on the Internet met a wall of disbelief with many concerned that the event could be a Cyberspace hoax or a money-making scheme.
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Wildfires in Central America and Mexico earlier this year scorched 15,000 square km, an area almost three-fourths the size of Israel.
JOHANNESBURG - Unionised workers of South Africa`s state-owned power utility Eskom stoned the company`s headquarters after it rejected their latest wage demands.
ABUJA - Nigeria`s military rulers ordered the release of prisoners who have completed their jail terms, but did not say whether political detainees could be among them.
BANGKOK - Myanmar`s ruling military junta has detained 79 elected opposition representatives for defying new government restrictions.
VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe - The economic salvation of Africa, the world`s poorest continent, lies in its people`s commitment to unity and cooperation.
