• United Nations envoys heard Albanians plead for the independence of Kosovo yesterday, while the Serb minority opposed it and the West made another diplomatic concession to placate Serb-backer Russia.

• Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul failed in his initial bid to become Turkey's President yesterday and the main opposition party tried to have the parliamentary vote annulled in an attempt to force an early general election.

• Taliban insurgents captured an Afghan district government headquarters, killing the top administrator, the police chief and three policemen, a senior provincial official said yesterday.

• French centrist Francois Bayrou, whose voters hold the key to next month's presidential election, accused frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday of subverting free speech by stifling a televised debate with a rival. Mr Bayrou said Mr Sarkozy had used his media and business contacts to pull the plug on today's debate on Canal+ television between Mr Bayrou and Segolene Royal, Sarkozy's Socialist challenger in a May 6 run-off vote.

• Estonia took away the controversial statue of a Red Army Soviet soldier from the centre of the capital early yesterday after violent riots against its removal in which one man was killed. Russia reacted furiously and its upper house of Parliament voted to ask President Vladimir Putin to sever relations with the small Baltic state.

• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as saying that his government knows the whereabouts of a BBC reporter who is presumed kidnapped in the Gaza Strip. 'The British journalist Alan Johnston is with a group of rebels,' Mr Abbas was quoted as saying by Deutsche Welle in an interview. He said his government had agreed with Britain to proceed with caution so as not to endanger the reporter's life.