CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Retired South African cleric and anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu was discharged from hospital on Wednesday, after he was re-admitted on Saturday to treat an infection, his family said.

GABORONE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe should step aside without delay and allow new leadership of a country whose political and economic implosion since 2000 is dragging down the whole of southern Africa, Botswana President Ian Khama said.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece has rejected the asylum requests from three Turkish soldiers who fled to the country after a failed coup attempt in Turkey, police sources said on Wednesday.

BEIRUT, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Syrian government forces and their allies launched an attack in Hama province in the west of the country on Wednesday as fighting spread days after a ceasefire collapsed, rebels, monitors and pro-Damascus media said.

TEL AVIV, Sept 21 (Reuters) - The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) must make significant changes to its structure, regulations and image or it will run itself out of business, a senior Nasdaq OMX official said on Wednesday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran marked the anniversary of its 1980 invasion by Iraq by showing off its latest ships and missiles and telling the United States not to meddle in the Gulf.

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's military closed in on Wednesday on the center of Shirqat, a northern town held by Islamic State seen as a stepping stone in the campaign to recapture the jihadists' stronghold of Mosul.

Reuters will issue this diary daily at around 1030 GMT

BEIRUT, Sept 21 (Reuters) - A Syrian warplane crashed north of Damascus on Wednesday, but it was unclear if it had been shot down or crashed because of a technical fault, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.