WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Roadside bomb incidents involving U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan hit their highest level in at least four years between April and June, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s parliament failed to reach agreement on an elections law on Wednesday, likely delaying into 2009 local polls that the United States and United Nations have pushed hard to be held as soon as possible.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic demanded on Wednesday that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the U.N. war crimes tribunal to back his claims of an immunity offer from the United States.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia buried Soviet-era dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn at a 16th-century monastery on Wednesday after a religious ceremony attended by President Dmitry Medvedev which bore all the hallmarks of a state funeral.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Russia has set no deadline for Iran to respond to an offer from six world powers aimed at resolving Tehran’s nuclear standoff with the West, Russia’s U.N. ambassador said on Wednesday.

HASHARON PRISON, Israel (Reuters) – Israel released five Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday as part of a swap deal with the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group that brought the bodies of two Israeli soldiers home.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Israel has agreed to release roughly 120 to 150 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday.

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Egyptian police shot dead a Sudanese man as he tried to sneak across the border to Israel on Wednesday, bringing to 19 the number of migrants killed at the frontier this year, medical and security sources said.

ANKARA/BAKU (Reuters) – An explosion on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline on Tuesday night in eastern Turkey has halted the oil flow along the one million barrels per day pipeline, a senior Turkish Energy Ministry official said.

MINSK (Reuters) – Russia may consider deploying strategic bombers or station tactical missiles in its close ally Belarus as a counter-measure to a planned U.S. missile shield in Europe, Moscow’s envoy to Minsk said on Wednesday.