BAMAKO, Mali - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright today reviewed Malian peacekeeping troops trained under a U.S. aid program to a country she described as pivotal to the stability of the region.

Albright, on the third stop of a six-nation trip across Africa, also announced a grant of $2 million for teacher training and scholarships for Malian women and girls.

Mali, a landlocked country of 9 million people, is one of the U.S. favorites in West Africa because of its peaceful transition to multiparty democracy in 1992, its economic-reform program and its role in solving regional conflicts.

On a dusty parade ground on the outskirts of the Malian capital, Bamako, Albright spoke to several hundred soldiers trained in peacekeeping operations and human-rights practices under President Clinton's Africa Crisis Response Initiative of 1996.

The aim is to help African countries react quickly to civil wars in the region, such as those in Liberia and Sierra Leone, both of which have borders with Mali.

Albright later flew to Nigeria's capital, Abuja, where she will meet President Olesegun Obasanjo, another African leader brought to power through elections after a long period of military rule.

Eastern Caribbean targeted by advancing Hurricane Jose

POINTE-A-PITRE, Guadeloupe - Hurricane Jose, the 10th named storm of a relentless hurricane season, was on a collision course today with the line of islands that make up the Eastern Caribbean.

Jose's winds strengthened to 75 mph today and it was moving west-northwest at 13 mph.

Residents on the French island of Martinique began stockpiling water and food while Red Cross officials went on alert in Puerto Rico, where the storm could strike Thursday.

Hijacker arrested in Germany; 55 aboard EgyptAir jet freed

HAMBURG, Germany - German police arrested the alleged hijacker of an EgyptAir plane after he forced it to land today in Hamburg. All 55 people aboard were freed unharmed, a spokesman said.

A hijacker armed with a knife seized control of Flight 838 after it left Istanbul at 6:16 p.m. (11:16 a.m. EDT) for Cairo, officials said. The motive was unknown.

Police overpowered the man when he came onto the tarmac, said a spokesman, who added that a co-pilot suffered a minor neck injury.

Battleship USS New Jersey makes last trip through canal

MIRAFLORES LOCK, The Panama Canal - The battleship USS New Jersey - the Navy's most decorated ship - began its 10th and final crossing through the Panama Canal yesterday. The ship's last voyage from Bremerton, Wash., where it was decommissioned, to New Jersey will cover 5,800 miles.

The decommissioned New Jersey is bound for its namesake state, where it will become a floating museum - either at Bayonne or Camden.

Ireland's nurses on strike for better pay, conditions

DUBLIN - Ireland's nurses, unhappy with pay and working conditions, started the republic's largest ever strike today. The strike is expected to involve most of the country's 28,000 nurses.

Nurses say they are exasperated with years of belt-tightening and want a slice of booming Ireland's prosperity.

Cambodian leader supports U.S. plan for genocide trial

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Prime Minister Hun Sen endorsed a U.S. initiative today that could salvage U.N. plans for a genocide trial of Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge leaders.

The decision comes after months of negotiations on a tribunal to judge Khmer Rouge leaders in the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s. About one in five Cambodians died from starvation, disease and purges of suspected enemies.

Bosnian Serb guilty of crimes, but not genocide, U.N. says

THE HAGUE - The U.N. war-crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia ruled today that self-confessed murderer Goran Jelisic was guilty of war crimes, but cleared the Bosnian Serb of genocide.

The judgment is the first the tribunal has made regarding genocide, the most serious of war crimes.

Goran Jelisic, 31, a one-time farm mechanic who called himself "the Serb Adolf" - a reference to Hitler - pleaded guilty last year to 31 counts of war crimes. He admitted to 12 named murders of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, but denied genocide, defined in tribunal statutes as acts with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, social or religious gro

Published Correction Date: 10/26/99 - Sierra Leone And Liberia In Part Share Borders With Guinea. An Item In This Digest Incorrectly Stated That Sierra Leone And Liberia Share Borders With Mali.