Floods claimed their first victim in Japan and nearly 300,000 people were urged to flee their homes Saturday as a weather system that killed dozens on the Korean peninsula swept the country.

Local governments in the central province of Niigata and tsunami-hit Fukushima issued the guidance after the national weather agency urged citizens to be on maximum alert against more flooding and mudslides.

The death toll rose to 25 Saturday from two separate coal mining accidents on the same day in Ukraine's eastern industrial district, notorious for its poor safety standards.

The Ukrainian emergency ministry raised the toll from 16 to 18 from an explosion early Friday at the Sukhodolskaya-Vostochnaya coal mine in the eastern Lugansk region.

The royal palace and the headquarters of the governing Labor Party were on self-confessed Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik's list of targets, the tabloid Verdens Gang (VG) reported Saturday.

"During his interrogation, he said that he had planned to attack other targets, but on July 22 it was only the seat of government in Oslo and Utoeya," the island where young Labor Party supporters were holding their summer camp, prosecutor Paal-Fredrick Hjort Kraby was quoted as telling the paper.

Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero Friday called general elections for November 20, four months early, insisting the country's battered economy was on the road to recovery.

"The course is set. So I am announcing a timetable for elections, which will be held on November 20," Zapatero told a news conference.

A fire at a Vietnamese shoe factory killed 17 people and seriously injured 21 others in the northern port city of Hai Phong, state-controlled media reported Saturday.

Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Bui Thi Them, one of the survivors, as saying the fire broke out Friday afternoon when welding sparks ignited roofing insulation. The welder was installing a lightening rod on the factory's tin roof in preparation for a tropical storm that is expected to hit northern Vietnam later Saturday.

Turkey's military police chief was named acting chief-of-staff late Friday, after the country's top military command resigned in a row with the government, the prime minister's office said.

"The president has approved the assignment of military police chief General Necdet Ozel as the land forces commander. General Ozel is deployed as acting chief-of-staff," it said in a statement.

Gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying minority Shiite Muslims in southwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing 11 of them in a sectarian attack, police said.

Two people were also wounded in the attack in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, senior police official Hamid Shakeel said.

The travel plans of thousands of Australians were disrupted Saturday by a power outage at Sydney's international airport.

Australia's busiest air terminal was blacked out for an hour and a half, crippling security screening and check-in and delaying "thousands" of passengers, a Sydney Airport spokesman said.

Pakistan Taliban militants on Friday said they were holding a Swiss couple kidnapped a month ago while on holiday in the remote province of Baluchistan.

Wali-ur Rehman, deputy head of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), did not provide proof that the group had the pair but said they were in good health and demanded they be exchanged for a Pakistani scientist jailed in the U.S.

U.S. and North Korean negotiators on Friday held a second day of talks on the North's nuclear weapons program, officials said.

The U.S. special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, and the North's first vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan held about 4.5 hours of talks at the U.S. mission to the United Nations.