KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo -- Fears of another African war escalated Wednesday as U.N. observers reported seeing 100 Rwandan soldiers inside the Democratic Republic of Congo.
GAZA -- A 750-member special security unit will be formed to help establish order and the rule of law in the Palestinian territories, a PA official says.
CHICAGO -- Chicago is poised to end 2004 with its lowest murder rate since 1965, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday. A decrease in killings in some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods has led to a 25 percent decline in the murder rate through November 2004, vs. the same 11-month period of 2003.
BAGHDAD -- As many as 1,000 Iraqi expatriates, many of them expelled by Saddam Hussein, are returning to their homeland each day as January elections approach. Sorya Isho Warda, Iraq's minister of displacement and migration, said as many as 116,000 have come back, many from Iran.
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday he would hold talks with Israel after the Jan. 9 presidential elections.
KIEV, Ukraine -- Political chaos in the Ukraine entered its 10th day Wednesday as parliament voted to fire Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and form an interim government.
The country's Supreme Court entered its third day of its examination of more than 10,000 claims of voting irregularities in the Nov. 21 poll, in which Yanukovych was proclaimed a winner by a slim margin.
WASHINGTON -- The numbers of HIV/AIDS cases in China and India are reaching crisis proportions and could threaten the world economy, a U.N. expert says.
