Alexandra Hudson and Reed Stevenson

THE HAGUE, Aug 1 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic appeared before a U.N. war crimes judge for the first time on Thursday to answer genocide charges and said he had been kidnapped and feared for his life.

Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 1 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council renewed the mandate for peacekeepers in Darfur on Thursday in a resolution that Washington criticized for raising concerns about moves to indict Sudan's president for genocide.

KABUL, Fri Aug 1, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Violence in Afghanistan has reached its worst level since 2001 with more than 260 civilians killed in July alone, a group of 100 aid agencies said on Friday while calling on all sides to respect the lives of non-combatants.

AP, PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN -- Fighting raged Thursday in a scenic valley in Pakistan's troubled northwest, killing at least 17 civilians, including seven members of a family whose home was hit by a mortar shell, local officials said.

The violence, which broke out Tuesday, has been the worst in months in the Swat valley, about 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad. Militants seeking to impose a Taliban-style social code have been burning girls schools, attacking police posts and capturing paramilitary troops.

REUTERS, NEW DELHI- Veteran communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet died of cardiac arrest at a hospital near New Delhi on Friday, his party said.

Suicide bombing of Indian Embassy

REUTERS, ISLAMABAD- Pakistan angrily rejected a New York Times report on Friday that said US intelligence agencies have concluded members of Pakistan's spy agency helped plan the suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month.

REUTERS, BALCILAR, Turkey- A gas explosion killed at least 16 female students and injured 27 others, wrecking a dormitory at a girls' school in southern Turkey on Friday, Interior Minister Besir Atalay said.

AP, BEIJING: The Chinese authorities, bowing to criticism from Olympic officials, foreign journalists and Western political leaders, have lifted some of the restrictions that blocked Web sites at the Main Press Center for the Summer Games, although other politically sensitive sites remained inaccessible Friday.

REUTERS, SEOUL- A furious dispute with Japan over who owns a desolate cluster of rocks has turned into a marketing opportunity for South Korean business tapping into patriotic fervour.

REUTERS, BANGKOK- It has been a week Thaksin Shinawatra will probably want to forget.

REUTERS, TRIPOLI- In Tripoli's most deprived areas, Lebanon's lingering political troubles are being fought out in a sectarian conflict that threatens to cause more bloodshed.

REUTERS, TOKYO- Struggling Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda tapped a popular rival for a top party post and was tipped to axe his finance and economics ministers in a shake-up on Friday to boost his flagging support among voters.

Bribery, fraud charge

REUTERS, JERUSALEM- Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for a fourth time on Friday in their ongoing bribery and fraud investigation, two days after the Israeli leader said he would step down.

REUTERS, GAZA- Hamas security forces arrested Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's top Fatah representatives in the Gaza Strip on Friday, ratcheting up tensions between the rival factions.

A day earlier Abbas ordered his Fatah-dominated security services in the West Bank to release all pro-Hamas activists, according to the official Palestinian WAFA news agency. Hamas said the activists had not yet been freed.

REUTERS, BEIJING- Two aftershocks on Friday hit the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, the site of May's devastating earthquake, with the second felt strongly in the provincial capital Chengdu, Xinhua news agency said. More than 69,200 people have been confirmed dead and some 18,000 are still listed as missing after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan on May 12, the deadliest in the country since 1976.

AFP, THE HAGUE - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic claimed Friday the United States wanted him dead after reneging on a deal to shield him from trial by the UN war crimes court.

AFP, SINGAPORE - A despondent Maria Sharapova pulled out of the Beijing Olympics on Friday with a shoulder injury, depriving the Games of one of its biggest stars.

AFP, NUKU'ALOFA) - Tonga's Siaosi Tupou V was crowned king of his tiny South Pacific nation Friday in a lavish, pomp-filled ceremony attended by royalty from around the world alongside Tongans in traditional dress.

KUALA LUMPUR: Government censors in this majority Muslim nation uphold an ethos of modesty by snipping sex scenes from films and ordering entertainers to avoid outfits that reveal too much on Malaysian stages - bare belly buttons and figure-hugging outfits are off limits.

REUTERS, WASHINGTON- The first object to brighten the dark, primordial universe after the Big Bang was the tiny seed of a star that rapidly grew into a behemoth 100 times more massive than the sun, scientists said on Thursday.