WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Israel’s peace efforts with Syria should continue, without preconditions, after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert steps down, a candidate to succeed him said on Friday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Calling graft a threat to Russia’s security, President Dmitry Medvedev released on Friday his national plan to fight red tape and corruption.

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.

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Egyptian police shot dead an unidentified African migrant and detained two others while they were trying to cross illegally into Israel on Friday, a security official and a medical source said.

KABUL (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, calling on all sides to do more to protect the lives of non-combatants.

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.

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered his security services on Thursday to release all pro-Hamas activists arrested in the occupied West Bank this week, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said.

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.