EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has expressed "deep regret" after two men were hanged for murder in Japan on Wednesday and repeated a call for a moratorium on using the death penalty.

"I deeply regret the execution by hanging of Hidenori Ogata and Kazuo Shinozawa on 28 July 2010, and the fact that this marks the resumption of executions in Japan after one year during which none took place," Ms Ashton said in a statement on Wednesday.

AP - Afghan President Hamid Karzai pushed his international partners on Thursday to take stronger action against terrorist sanctuaries outside of Afghanistan. In a clear reference to havens in Pakistan, Karzai said: "The international community is here to fight terrorism, but there is danger elsewhere and they are not acting."

Pressure is building on Pakistan to escalate the fight against militants on its soil, especially since the release of more than 90,000 leaked U.S. military documents posted Sunday on the web by WikiLeaks. The trove of U.S. intelligence reports alleged close connections between Pakistan's intelligence agency and Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

AP - A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona's immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.

The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents - including sections that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also put on hold parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.

The Pakistani government declared Thursday as a day of mourning for the victims of the Airblue plane crash that killed all 152 passengers on Wednesday. The Islamabad-bound Airbus A321 slammed into the mountains just 15 kilometers away from the capital's airport. The plane's wreckage is strewn across the densely forested Margalla Hills, hampering the investigation. In particular, officials say the difficult conditions on the ground have frustrated the search for the plane's "black box" flight recorder that may provide answers as to what led to the crash.

AFP - A boat capsized on a river in western Democratic Republic of Congo killing at least 140 people, the provincial governor's office said Thursday.
   
The boat overturned on the Kasai river, a tributary of the Congo river, on Wednesday.

Some TV news channels will no doubt present the current Operation Tor Shezada (Black Prince), in southern Afghanistan in the same, ludicrous fashion as they reported Operation Moshtarak earlier in the year in Helmand. Or Operation Panther's Claw before that.

The story is not about how big or long or fat or noisy the current operation is. Because the current operation is almost irrelevant in its significance.       

Operation Tor Shezada will be completely successful in "clearing" an area because obviously the Americans and British have overwhelming firepower and manpower and can clearly "clear" anything they want whenever they want, with minimal loss of life. Minimal risk, frankly.

But that has as much to do with winning the Afghan war as rearing alpacas in Chile.

Singapore's long-serving administration has won some time to ponder how it will deal with yet another self-inflicted blow to its global branding.

The reprieve came as a Singapore court today postponed a case against the British author Alan Shadrake for three weeks.

Shadrake, 75, faces contempt of court charges, after Singapore's Media Development Authority lodged a police report on 16 July against his book Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, which criticises the application of the death penalty. Published in neighbouring Malaysia, the book has sparked a criminal defamation investigation against the author in Singapore.