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THE HAGUE: Serbia handed over former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was on the run for more than a decade, to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague to face genocide charges Wednesday. Karadzic, who was arrested in Belgrade on July 21, left the Serbian capital on a special flight to the Netherlands in the early hours of Wednesday, just after Serbian police clashed with his supporters in Belgrade.
-- AFP
BANGKOK: Thailand's Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to hear new corruption charges against deposed Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, involving a controversial loan to military-ruled Myanmar. The case is the second against Thaksin accepted by the court this week, after judges on Monday agreed to consider charges against Thaksin and his aides stemming from a lottery scandal. In the latest case, military-backed investigators accused the fallen premier of conflict of interest in a loan granted by the Export-Import Bank of Thailand so that Myanmar could buy satellite services from Thaksin's Shin Satellite.
-- AFP
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's military said Wednesday that the security forces killed up to 25 militants in the troubled Swat valley in the country's northwest. The army launched a major operation in the valley after Taliban kidnapped 25 police and paramilitary soldiers from a police station Tuesday. Local TV channels quoted army information officer in the area Major Farooq as saying that curfew was imposed in the whole Swat valley before launching the operation early Wednesday. He said that around 25 armed militants were killed in the Srabandey area of Swat.
-- Xinhua
FUZHOU: More than 450,000 people have suffered economic losses and 107 flights have been canceled in eastern China since Typhoon Fung Wong, the eighth tropical storm to hit China this year, made landfall late on Monday. The typhoon, which was downgraded to a tropical storm on Tuesday, destroyed 110 houses and forced the evacuations of 390,000 people in Fujian province.
-- Xinhua
COLOMBO: Twenty-one Tamil rebels and four government troops were killed in fresh fighting in Sri Lanka's embattled north as the nation readied to host a summit of regional leaders, officials said Wednesday. The palm-fringed island will be the venue for the two-day summit of leaders of the 15th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation which opens Saturday. Defense ministry officials said 21 separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas were killed in clashes Tuesday in the northern Wanni region 250 kilometers north of the capital.
-- AFP
GAZA: At least six Hamas militants were wounded in a blast that ripped through a Hamas training facility in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, witnesses and security sources said. Hamas did not accuse any side of being behind the explosion which residents in the city said appeared to be a work accident. The witnesses said the blast occurred inside the camp that is located in a former Israeli settlement in the west of Khan Younis.
-- Xinhua
PRETORIA: Talks on Zimbabwe's political crisis broke up Tuesday in South Africa as negotiators flew home to resolve a deadlock over power-sharing between President Robert Mugabe and his rival Morgan Tsvangirai. But South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating an end to the crisis, insisted discussions were still on track despite talk of a deadlock by Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Earlier, the chief spokesman for Tsvangirai's MDC said the talks had reached a logjam.
-- AFP
LOS ANGELES: A magnitude 5.4 earthquake shook Los Angeles and surrounding areas in Southern California on Tuesday, but there were no immediate reports of any injuries or damage. The quake temblor shook buildings from Los Angeles to San Diego, more than 60 kilometers south of Los Angeles, and could be felt as far away as Las Vegas, a desert city about 280 miles northeast of Los Angeles, according to local broadcast reports.
-- Xinhua
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