Eurasia

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A top manager of the now defunct YUKOS business empire was sentenced on Friday by a Russian court to life in prison for ordering a series of high profile murders, a verdict he dismissed as the result of a show trial organized by the Kremlin.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The former U.S. peace mediator for Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, on Thursday dismissed a claim by Radovan Karadzic that the United States had offered a deal that would spare him prosecution for war crimes.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Radovan Karadzic’s appearance before a U.N. judge in The Hague on Thursday starts a process that many Bosnians hope will help them understand better what happened during the 1992-95 war.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – California will no longer exist on the Russian map. Russia’s north-western region of Nizhny Novgorod has decided to eliminate the tiny village of California due to the lack of inhabitants, Itar-Tass news agency reported on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed frustration on Thursday over his government’s inability to break the vicious circle of red tape and corruption which he said was hampering small businesses.

ZAGREB (Reuters) – Israel’s ambassador in Croatia on Thursday condemned the funeral given to a World War Two concentration camp head, saying it insulted the memory of those killed in the camp run by Croatia’s Nazi-allied Ustasha regime.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said he would like more time to study genocide charges against him before entering a plea, when he appeared in court for the first time on Thursday.

(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 after his dramatic arrest that ended 11 years on the run.

KIEV (Reuters) – Floods in western Ukraine have killed 30 people and prompted the evacuation of nearly 18,000, officials said on Thursday, after five days of rain caused rivers to spill over into villages and farmland.

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) – At least 13 people, including two women, were killed in clashes between troops and militants on Thursday in Pakistan’s Swat valley, police said, taking the death toll in days of fighting to nearly 50.