BUDAPEST, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Hungary's national healthcare system will next year undergo a massive shake-up that will allow in private insurance companies for the first time, the government said Tuesday.

Under a new regionalised system, agreed by the coalition Socialist and Free Democratic parties, the former national healthcare fund will be replaced by 22 separate funds, each responsible for a different county, health minister Agnes Horvath said.

The capital Budapest will have four different funds.

PARIS, Sept 13, 2007 (AFP) - French Prime Minister Francois Fillon called for France to follow the lead of its neighbour Germany in carrying out far-reaching structural reforms, in an article to be published on Friday.

'As Germany has done these past years, we need to look further ahead, to aim higher,' Fillon wrote in an article for Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and France's Le Figaro newspaper.

LAGOS, Aug 29, 2007 (AFP) - Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua has set up a committee to carry out wide-ranging reforms of the country's electoral process after a flawed vote in April this year, his office said Wednesday.

'One incontestable fact is that Nigerians have arrived at a consensus that democratic governance is the most acceptable form of government,' Yar'Adua said late Tuesday during the inauguaration of the 22-member committee in Abuja.