The flamboyant "super minister" son of former Senegalese leader Abdoulaye Wade went on trial Thursday accused of accumulating a multi-million dollar fortune through corruption while in office.

Karim Wade, 45, is alleged to have corruptly acquired companies and real estate worth almost $240 million (180 million euros) and has been in custody in Dakar for more than a year.

France is considering disbanding a radical Jewish group whose members clashed with pro-Palestinian activists during rallies over Israel's offensive in Gaza, a source close to the case told Agence France Presse Thursday.

News of the mooted ban on the Jewish Defense League (LDJ) came just ahead of an evening pro-Israel demonstration outside the Jewish state's embassy, located near the French prime minister's office.

Russia has asked Bulgaria to extradite a prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was arrested at Sofia airport, the Bulgarian prosecution announced on Thursday.

Nikolay Koblyakov, founder of the French non-governmental organisation Russie-Liberte which had staged a series of anti-Putin actions in France, was detained on an Interpol warrant at Sofia airport on Tuesday and held for 72 hours, the interior ministry said.

Sweden on Thursday backed current EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem to stay on for a second mandate in a soon-to-be-named new European Commission -- the second female appointment for a team in desperate need of women.

"It's gratifying to be able to nominate Cecilia," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told news agency TT upon putting forward his fellow Swedish politician.

Twenty-six people died as a result of a horrific tanker truck explosion in southeast Turkey last week, with the toll rising drastically after more victims passed away at hospitals across the country, media reported Thursday.

A tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) overturned and exploded on a highway near Diyarbakir on July 22, killing one person on the spot.

Azerbaijani authorities said Thursday that prominent human rights activist Leyla Yunus, who has been charged with treason, was collaborating with the spy agencies of arch-enemy Armenia.

"It is established that in 2002 Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunus... had trained the journalist Rauf Mirkadirov in espionage and has since organized several of his trips to Armenia," the Azeri prosecutor general's office said in a statement.

A Uighur exile group on Thursday demanded the immediate release of an academic charged with separatism in China, saying the decision to prosecute him was political in nature.

"We demand China immediately correct its mistaken methods and release Ilham Tohti," Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) said in an e-mail.

A German army general has for the first time been appointed chief of staff to work with the commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe, both countries' militaries said Thursday.

Brigadier General Markus Laubenthal will serve as "the right-hand man" to Lieutenant General Donald Campbell Jr, who commands more than 37,000 U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) personnel from headquarters in the central city of Wiesbaden, said Germany's defense ministry.

U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay on Thursday raised the alarm over Washington's plans to scale up the deportation of illegal child migrants from Central America.

"There are almost 57,000 unaccompanied children in the United States. I'm particularly concerned because the United States appears to be taking steps to deport most of these children," Pillay told reporters.

Norwegian police announced Thursday a second arrest in the case of the attempted murder of the imam of Oslo's main mosque in mid-June.

The young man, a Norwegian national, was previously known to police, Oslo police officer Andreas Strand told Agence France Presse, without specifying his role in the attack.