The European Commission said Wednesday it is checking gifts and gadgets which host Russia gave to delegations at last month's G20 summit to see if they pose a security risk.

With daily revelations stoking concerns over the extent of covert surveillance by friend and foe alike, the latest reports suggest that Russia hoped to trick G20 delegates into using devices which could feed back sensitive information.

Indonesia protested strongly to the United States Wednesday after a report said Washington had been monitoring phone calls and communication networks from its embassy in Jakarta, as the spying row spread to Asia.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday that a top-secret map leaked by fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden showed 90 U.S. surveillance facilities at embassies and consulates.

A bomb on Wednesday killed five Pakistani soldiers in a restive tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials said.

The explosion took place in a village in the South Waziristan tribal region.

Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran has never stopped 20 percent uranium enrichment, denying earlier claims of a temporarily halt, parliament's website reported Wednesday.

"Twenty percent uranium and nuclear plates are being produced inside the country and there has never been a halt in the production trend," Salehi was quoted as saying.

Over 5,000 refugees fleeing fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have escaped into neighboring Uganda this week, United Nations officials said Wednesday, warning that double that number are expected to cross the border.

"Fighting...is causing a large amount of displacement into Uganda," said Lucy Beck, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, adding that 5,000 refugees had crossed the border since Monday.

South Africa's police watchdog Wednesday said it had opened a probe into the country's top police officer, who is accused of tipping off a key lieutenant that he was under investigation.

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) will establish if National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega told her Western Cape police boss about an investigation being carried out into his links to a local businessman.

India's defense minister on Wednesday accused the Pakistani army of helping militants cross over the border, which has been gripped by some of the worst firing in 10 years.

Shooting at the frontier between the nuclear-armed rivals has been among the heaviest since a ceasefire agreement in 2003, with India accusing Pakistan of more than 200 violations this year.

The head of German foreign intelligence denied Wednesday that Berlin was carrying out bugging operations from its embassy in the United States in a deepening espionage row.

"No telecommunication-intelligence is conducted from the German embassy in Washington," Gerhard Schindler, head of the BND agency, was quoted by Zeit online news site as saying.

Police in Beijing are searching for eight suspects from China's restive Xinjiang region after a fatal car crash in Tiananmen Square, hotel staff said Wednesday, as a minority rights group expressed fears of a crackdown.

A police notice issued to hotels in the capital named eight suspects who appeared mostly to be from China's mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, sought in connection with a "major incident" in Beijing on Monday, staff at two hotels told Agence France Presse.

Afghan negotiators seeking peace with the Taliban will soon travel to Pakistan for their first meeting with key militant commander Mullah Baradar, officials said Wednesday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement that a deal had been reached after talks on Tuesday in London with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.