LONDON (Reuters) – Most headlines about Basra, the port city in southern Iraq that is home to the bulk of the country’s vast oil wealth, tend to focus on death, destruction and wasted opportunity after five years of war.

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.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will try to reach an agreement in peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas before a new Israeli government takes office, an official close to Olmert said on Thursday.

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.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The United States has accused members of Pakistan’s main spy agency of tipping off al Qaeda-linked militants before U.S. missile attacks on targets in Pakistani tribal lands, Pakistan’s defense minister said.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic faces 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.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian oil executive detained in Libya since last year has been freed, his employers LUKOIL said on Thursday, hours before Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was due to host the country’s prime minister.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – NATO members must send more troops to southern Afghanistan, where Canada and a few other nations are bearing the brunt of combat against Taliban militants, Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay said on Wednesday.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Afghan and NATO-led troops backed by air power killed more than 20 Taliban insurgents southwest of the capital Kabul, a provincial official said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.