Eurasia

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A blast killed two people in an apartment building early on Wednesday in Sochi, the southern Russian city set to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, police and emergency services said.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Red and white banners along Nile bridges and Cairo streets this month were Egypt’s latest effort to curb an increasingly pressing problem: a population growing faster than the economy can support.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities detained at least 21 ultra-nationalists, including two prominent retired generals, on Tuesday in a widening police investigation into a suspected coup plot against the government.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The man suspected of killing Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 is hiding in Western Europe, Russia’s chief criminal investigator was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

KABUL (Reuters) – NATO troops in Afghanistan and Pakistani soldiers together killed a number of militants along the rugged border, the NATO force said on Tuesday, in a rare show of close cross-border military cooperation.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian prosecutors said on Monday they had charged a gang led by two teenagers of murdering 20 people in a series of racist killings over eight months.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – An explosion destroyed the home of a militant in Pakistan’s Khyber region on Monday, killing seven people, on the third day of a government offensive against Islamists threatening the city of Peshawar.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Turkey will ask Malaysia’s main opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to leave its embassy in Kuala Lumpur as soon as possible, Malaysia’s foreign minister said on Monday.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A loud blast alarmed residents and security officials in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and nearby city of Rawalpindi on Monday but police later said it appeared it had been a sonic boom.

KABUL (Reuters) – Pakistan must stop militants crossing the border to attack targets in Afghanistan, otherwise the Kabul government will take action, Afghanistan’s presidential spokesman said on Tuesday.