Twelve million people in the drought-hit Horn of Africa region need emergency aid, the U.N. food agency said on Wednesday, appealing for $120 million to help desperate farmers.

"Around 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are currently in need of emergency assistance," the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement, adding that hundreds of people are dying every day in the crisis.

Serbia has arrested Goran Hadzic, the one-time Croatian Serb rebel leader who is the last remaining fugitive wanted by the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, government sources said Wednesday.

Serbian President Boris Tadic is expected to announce the arrest officially at a press conference at 11:00 am (09:00 GMT).

The United Nations said Wednesday that famine has hit two parts of rebel-held Somalia, due to a severe drought affecting more than 10 million people in the Horn of Africa.

"The United Nations declared today that famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia: southern Bakool, and Lower Shabelle," a statement by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia said.

One of Russia's most senior former nuclear officials has been arrested for allegedly pocketing state research grants and stealing other people's work off the Internet, a news report said Wednesday.

Yevgeny Yevstratov, who served as deputy general director of the Rosatom state nuclear corporation, oversaw a group that received some 50 million rubles ($1.7 million) in nuclear safety research assistance.

A gunbattle between Afghan police and insurgents in the city of Kandahar on Wednesday killed three policemen and wounded eight people, officials said.

A spokesman for the interior ministry said the fighting was triggered by a police operation following a tip-off about the presence of two insurgents holed up in a house in the area, including one he said was a top Taliban commander.

Australian police Wednesday said they fired tear gas, sound and flash weapons and "bean bag" bullets to quell overnight riots at the Christmas Island immigration detention centre.

Immigration authorities said about 50 detainees were involved in the disturbance, which saw fires lit and police threatened with makeshift weapons at the centre, some 2,600 kilometers from Australia's mainland.

North Korea is grappling with an unfavorable situation but the regime's tight grip on its people will prevent any Arab-style uprising, South Korea's defense minister said Wednesday.

"The state of affairs in the North is indeed inauspicious and anything can happen there," Kim Kwan-Jin told a forum, without elaborating.

The United States should stay out of a surge in tension in the disputed South China Sea, a Chinese government mouthpiece said Wednesday after Washington backed its ally the Philippines in the row.

"Looming over the South China Sea is the image of another big nation, the United States," said a commentary in the People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's main propaganda outlet.

The Taliban on Wednesday said Mullah Omar was still alive, accusing the Americans of hacking into their phones after a text message sent to media from a spokesman's phone said the leader was dead.

In the message, Zabihullah Mujahid said: "Leadership council of IEA (Islamic emirate of Afghanistan) announces that Ameer-ul-Mumineen (Mullah Omar) has passed away. May mighty God bless him."

Pakistani officials on Tuesday accused the Afghan army of firing mortar bombs across the border, killing four Pakistani soldiers and stepping up a recent surge of cross-border violence.

The officials said two other soldiers were wounded in the attack in South Waziristan, part of the lawless tribal district on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan that Washington has called the global headquarters of al-Qaida.