Ukraine

Mine explosion kills at least 19

An underground explosion Wednesday night tore through a coal mine in Ukraine, killing at least 19 miners in the latest disaster to hit the country’s mining industry.

Two miners were still missing after the explosion, which occurred 3,557 feet underground, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

It wasn’t immediately known what caused the blast, which was the latest in a series of accidents at mines in Ukraine believed to be the most dangerous in the world with about 3,700 miners killed since 1991. Critics blame the dangers on a lack of funds to modernize equipment and negligence toward safety regulations.

London

‘Millionaire’ winner charged with deception

A British army officer who won $1.56 million on the TV quiz show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” was charged Wednesday with deception and conspiracy by police investigating claims he cheated on the program.

Maj. Charles Ingram, 38, was charged by Scotland Yard detectives and released on bail until a court hearing Aug. 7.

His wife, 38-year-old Diana Ingram, and Tecwen Whittock, a 52-year-old college teacher from Cardiff, Wales, also were charged.

Charles Ingram won the show’s top prize in September, but the episode was never broadcast and Ingram’s check was withheld because of suspicions he cheated. News reports suggested investigators believe someone in the audience relayed correct answers to questions by coughing.

Afghanistan

Karzai called target of car-bomb plot

A hapless would-be car bomber who was intercepted after a traffic accident in the heart of Kabul told interrogators he was assigned by al-Qaida to assassinate President Hamid Karzai or, failing that, to kill foreigners in the Afghan capital, an Afghan intelligence chief said Wednesday.

Investigators still have not established the identity or nationality of the suspect, captured Monday, but they know that the “very sophisticated” car bomb, almost a half-ton of explosives, was put together outside Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh said.

Saleh implied the alleged plot originated in Pakistan.

Croatia

Bosnian warlord sentenced to 20 years

A former warlord once considered among Bosnia’s richest men was convicted of war crimes Wednesday by a Croatian court in Zagreb and sentenced to a maximum 20 years in prison.

Fikret Abdic, also known as Babo, was found guilty of participating in the detention and killing of fellow Muslims during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He was arrested in Croatia in June 2001.

The indictment accused Abdic of opening detention camps for his Muslim opponents in the state he created in 1993 in northwestern Bosnia.

A total of about 5,000 people were detained in those camps, and at least three of them died as a result of torture there, according to the verdict returned by chief judge Jasminka Jerinic-Mucnjak.

Moscow

Smoke from bog fires keeps residents indoors

Haze mingled with a blanket of smoke rolling in from more than a hundred peat bog fires burning on the city’s outskirts Wednesday cut visibility to 50 yards in parts of Russia’s capital, and prompted health warnings for the young, old and sick.

As many as 119 peat bog fires burned Wednesday in the woodlands surrounding the Russian capital. Firefighters have been battling peat fires outside Moscow for days

Russia’s Weather Center reported that the smoke was expected to hover over the Moscow region for at least two more days.