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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has rejected a request by a Bush administration human rights envoy to visit a factory park in the North where South Korean firms make goods using cheap labor from the North, an official said on Tuesday.

Michele Kambas is a senior correspondent in Cyprus, where she has worked for Reuters since 1995. A British national, she has lived on the east Mediterranean island for 20 years. In the following story, she recounts the upheaval caused by stringent water rationing and one of the worst droughts on record.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Just hours before flying to Beijing for the Olympics on Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush used some of his bluntest language yet in publicly pressing China to improve its human rights record.

TRINIDAD, Bolivia (Reuters) - Anti-government protesters on Wednesday mounted roadblocks and surrounded an airport, forcing Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales to abandon rallies days before a recall vote.

DENVER (Reuters) - Protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver can be restricted to fenced-in areas, federal judge ruled on Wednesday, saying that security needs outweighed curbs on their rights.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Millionaire socialite Paris Hilton has jumped into the U.S. election campaign, calling Republican candidate John McCain a "wrinkly white-haired guy" and offering her own energy policy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roadside bomb incidents involving U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan hit their highest level in at least four years between April and June, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Britain on Wednesday criticized a United Nations probe into the March storming of a courthouse by U.N. and NATO troops in Kosovo that concluded that commanders had ignored cautionary advice from New York.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has urged the Bush administration to shelve a nuclear trade deal with India unless it can guarantee compliance with a U.S. law that would suspend trade if India tested a nuclear weapon again.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Leaders of Pakistan's civilian coalition consulted into the early hours of Thursday morning on whether to strip President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally, of his powers and possibly impeach him.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a senior police homicide investigator in Ciudad Juarez on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fourth policeman killed in the city this week, an attorney general's office said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Deutsche Bank executive is suing a son and a brother of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden for at least $10 million over a deal they had to buy into a hedge fund, according to court documents.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Just hours before flying to Beijing for the Olympics, U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday will use some of his bluntest language yet in publicly pressing China to clean up its human rights record.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Violence has decreased and security has improved across most of Iraq in the past three months but much progress is needed on the political front, a top U.N. official said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Millionaire socialite Paris Hilton has jumped into the U.S. election campaign, calling Republican candidate John McCain a "wrinkly white-haired guy" and offering her own energy policy.

ELKHART, Indiana (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took aim at Republican John McCain's maverick image on Wednesday as the campaign trail took another negative turn.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic demanded on Wednesday that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the U.N. war crimes tribunal to back his claims of an immunity offer from the United States.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia was under fire from the International Red Cross on Wednesday after the aid agency demanded the government clarify whether it had deliberately misused its emblem during a mission to free rebel hostages.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed on Wednesday to the release of 120 to 150 Palestinian prisoners later this month as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian officials said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq is making strides in using oil revenues to rebuild its shattered infrastructure, a senior U.S. embassy official said on Wednesday, disputing a critical report from Washington.