e Yugoslavia

Los Angeles  - Wild fires Saturday consumed 600 mobile homes as they raged near Los Angeles, opening a second front on the California flame wars that have already devastated areas outside of Santa Barbara.

Athens - Greek police have launched an investigation into an incident in which three officers allegedly forced a migrant to strip during a search in Athens, reports said Monday.

Sydney - Australian shares gave up 3.3 per cent at the opening bell Thursday in response to the plunge on Wall Street.

Paris - The day after Wall Street posted its worst loss since 2001, French shares were sharply down on Tuesday, with banks again pointing the way.

Brussels - European Union officials Tuesday said Uzbekistan had made important progress on human rights issues, but insisted that it was still too early to say whether the progress had been enough to convince the bloc to lift a travel ban on Uzbek regime members.

Jakarta - A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck Saturday morning in eastern Indonesia’s Maluku islands, seismologists said.

Cairo - Egyptian security forces closed three fuel smuggling tunnels near its Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a security source said.

Buenos Aires - Argentina is set to pay off its defaulted debt with the Paris Club, some 6.706 billion dollars, using the reserves held by its Central Bank, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said Tuesday in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires - Two former high officials of the last military dictatorship in Argentina, Antonio Bussi and Luciano Benjamin Menendez, were sentenced to life in prison Thursday by a federal court in the northern Argentine city of San Miguel de Tucuman.

Warsaw - Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski has said he’d prefer Russia to work with the West, but Russia would lose again if it came to confrontation.