Eurasia Press & News

(BBC NEWS) Hamas says it has released the top representative of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party in the Gaza Strip. Zakaria Agha was held for four days after being seized by Hamas gunmen.

(BBC NEWS) Palestinian medical workers say a teenager shot by Israeli troops in the West Bank village of Nilin last week has died of his wounds.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A United Nations investigation into the March storming of a courthouse by U.N. and NATO troops in northern Kosovo criticizes the force for rushing in, diplomats briefed on its contents said on Friday.

KABUL (Reuters) – Two improvised explosive devices (IED) killed five soldiers from NATO-led forces and one civilian in Afghanistan on Friday, the NATO force said in a statement, and a young suicide bomber killed three civilians in the south.

BALCILAR, Turkey (Reuters) – A gas explosion killed at least 17 girls and injured 27 others, wrecking a dormitory at a school in southern Turkey on Friday, a military rescue official said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The number of civilians killed in Iraq last month fell to less than a quarter of the toll in July 2007, government figures released on Friday showed, underscoring a dramatic improvement in security.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s government called for calm on Friday to dampen a bitter row over the status of Kirkuk, a day after Kurdish councilors called for the city to become part of the largely autonomous region of Kurdistan.

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. The plan, published on the official Web site www.kremlin.ru, calls for sweeping legal and social reform that, fail or flourish, analysts say could define Medvedev’s …

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – 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.

PODGORICA (Reuters) – Montenegro has charged eight former soldiers over their role in the 1999 killing of 23 ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo, a lawyer of the victims’ families said on Friday.