Asia Confirmed deaths from Asia's tsunami catastrophe neared 81,000, with experts predicting much worse to come as the world's biggest ever relief operation stuttered into life against enormous odds. Asia Britain and Australia followed Japan and the United States in pledging dramatic increases in emergency aid for victims of the tsunami disaster in Asia as the world community struggled to cope with its mushrooming fallout. Iraq Pitched battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in strife-torn Mosul left 25 dead and another 30 people were killed when a Baghdad house rigged with explosives blew up during a police raid. Saudi Several people were wounded in two car bomb attacks against security targets in the Saudi capital Riyadh, the interior ministry said said. Warcrimes Some 800 ethnic Albanians exhumed from a mass grave near Belgrade following the 1998-99 war in Kosovo were the victims of mass executions, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor said, in the first such admission from a Serb official. Ukraine Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko said that he planned to put forward his radical ally Yulia Timoshenko for the post of prime minister. Iraq French authorities placed under investigation two assistants of a French lawmaker, as part of a probe into a failed freelance mission to free two French reporters held hostage in Iraq, a source close to the investigation said. Uganda The Ugandan government and northern rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) held the first ever face-to-face talks near the border with Sudan in a bid to resolve 18 years of conflict in the north. Mauritania Three politicians accused of fomenting coup attempts in Mauritania turned accusers in court, charging the government with stifling democratic opposition in the northwest African state.