Nearly 50 people have been killed in three days in a fresh surge of sectarian violence in the Central African Republic, a peacekeeping officer said Wednesday.

The violence was triggered by the killing of 17 Muslims at a camp in the central Bambari region on Monday, by gunmen claiming to be from a mostly Christian militia called the anti-balaka.

Azerbaijani troops have shot dead a soldier from the separatist Nagorny Karabakh forces in the latest outbreak of violence along the disputed region's volatile frontline, the rebel defense ministry said on Wednesday.  

"Private Armen Avetisian, 19, was shot dead by Azerbaijani troops on June 24 at the southern sector of the line of separation between Karabakh and Azerbaijani armed forces," the self-proclaimed state's defence ministry said in a statement.

The new U.S. ambassador to China Max Baucus chided Beijing on Wednesday for a wave of arrests of "moderate voices", in his first public address since arriving in March.

Baucus, who succeeded Gary Locke, did not name names in his speech to businesspeople but told them that greater rights protections would strengthen U.S.-China relations.

More than 800 Taliban insurgents have launched a major offensive in southern Afghanistan to try to gain territory recently vacated by U.S. troops, officials said Wednesday, adding that 40 civilians have died in five days of fighting.

Around 100 Taliban fighters have been killed, according to the interior ministry, in clashes that erupted as Afghanistan wrestled with a political crisis over alleged fraud in the June 14 election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai.

A Spanish judge ruled Wednesday that King Felipe VI's sister, Princess Cristina and her husband should face fraud charges, opening the way to an unprecedented criminal trial.

Six days after Felipe, 46, took the Spanish throne promising an "honest and transparent" monarchy, the decision refocused attention on a scandal that had blighted the reign of his 76-year-old father Juan Carlos.

Malawi President Peter Mutharika has fired the country’s army chief, General Henry Odillo, his office said Wednesday.

Odillo had in 2012 reportedly refused to take over government after the sudden death of then-president Bingu wa Mutharika, the current president's brother.

The American husband of a Sudanese Christian woman cleared by a court of apostasy but facing death threats from extremist Muslims said on Wednesday they are fearful and want to leave Sudan.

"We are worried. That's why we want to get out of here as soon as possible," Daniel Wani told Agence France Presse from a Khartoum police station where his wife, Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 26, is being questioned.

The case for tougher sanctions against Russia gets stronger every day Moscow fails to match its welcome for the Ukraine government's peace plan with concrete action, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday.

The shooting down of a Ukrainian helicopter, killing all nine on board, by pro-Russian rebels Tuesday, was hard to reconcile with President Vladimir Putin's backing of the plan, Hague said.

The Turkish government said Wednesday it will present a bill to parliament aimed at reviving stalled peace talks with Kurdish rebels, in an apparent bid to win presidential election votes from Turkey's biggest minority.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is widely expected to be unveiled on July 1 as the ruling party's candidate for the August polls and support from the Kurdish minority could ease his path to a near certain victory.

Russia on Wednesday said it hoped Kiev and the international community will heed the "positive signals" it was sending over the Ukraine crisis after President Vladimir Putin moved to scrap the option to invade. 

"We are counting on the positive signals that the Russian president is now sending being heard across the world and, above all, in Ukraine," Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told Russian news agencies.