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BERLIN — The Palestinian Authority's ambassador to the Czech Republic died on Wednesday after suffering severe injuries to his arms and legs caused by an explosion at his Prague residence, the police reported. They said there was no indication the explosion had been a terrorist attack.

The diplomat, Jamal al-Jamal, 56, had been in the Czech capital only since Oct. 11. He and his family were just moving into the residence, and the explosion occurred while he was opening a safe, according to the online news service novinky.cz.

A police spokeswoman, Andrea Zoulova, confirmed that Mr. Jamal had died in a Prague hospital from the injuries, but declined any comment on the cause of the explosion. The president of the Czech police, Martin Cervicek, was quoted by Czech television as saying "we do not have a single indication that this could be a terrorist attack."

The villa where the explosion took place suffered no damage visible from the outside, according to the online service of the Mlada Fronta Dnes daily newspaper. It quoted neighbors as saying they had heard nothing.

The Palestine Liberation Organization maintains missions in a number of European capitals. The ambassador's residence is different from the mission itself, which is in a neighboring villa.

Brennan Linsley/Associated Press

Partygoers smoking marijuana on Tuesday at a bar in Denver during a prohibition-era themed New Year's Eve party to celebrate the start of retail marijuana sales.

DENVER — Colorado embarked on a bold experiment on Wednesday with legalizing marijuana, as shops from downtown Denver to snowy ski resorts began selling the once-illicit drug to any adult with proper identification and a hankering for a hit of Blue Diesel or Kandy Kush.

To supporters, it was a watershed moment in the country's tangled relationship with the ubiquitous recreational drug. They celebrated with speeches and balloons, hailing it as akin to the end of Prohibition, albeit with joints being passed instead of champagne being uncorked.

To skeptics, it marked a grand folly, one they said would lead to higher drug use among teenagers and more impaired drivers on the roads, and would tarnish the image of a state whose official song is John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High." The governor of Colorado and the mayor of Denver both opposed legalization, and stayed away from the smoky celebrations on Wednesday.

While some 20 states allow medical marijuana, voters in Colorado and Washington State decided last year to go one step further, becoming the first in the nation to legalize small amounts of the drug for recreational use and regulate it like alcohol. Ever since, the states have been racing to devise rules detailing how to grow it, sell it, tax it and track it.

In both Colorado and Washington, recreational marijuana has been legal for more than a year. Adults can smoke it in their living rooms, and eat marijuana-laced cookies without fear of arrest. In Colorado, they are even allowed to grow up to six plants at home. But until Wednesday, dispensaries could sell only to customers with a doctor's recommendation and state-issued medical-marijuana card.

Now, any Colorado resident who is 21 can buy up to an ounce of marijuana at one of the 40 dispensaries that began selling to retail customers on Wednesday. Out-of-state visitors can buy a quarter-ounce, but they have to use it within the state. Carrying marijuana across state lines remains illegal, and the plant is not allowed at the Denver International Airport.

Washington's marijuana system is at least several months behind Colorado, meaning that fully stocked retail shelves probably will not be a reality at the consumer level until perhaps June.

While Colorado incorporates the existing medical marijuana system, Washington is starting from scratch, with all of the production and sale of recreational marijuana linked to the new system of licenses, which will not be issued until late February or early March.

"After that, it's up to the industry to get it up and running," said Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which regulates the system and is processing almost 5,000 license applications to grow, process or sell.

Growers can start a crop only after they get a license, Mr. Carpenter said, and retailers can sell only marijuana produced in-state by licensed growers when that crop comes in.

With the advent of legal, recreational marijuana, Colorado and Washington have become national petri dishes for drug policy. Their successes or failures will be watched closely by Arizona, Alaska, California, Oregon and other states flirting with the idea of liberalizing their marijuana laws.

Questions still abound. Will drug traffickers take marijuana across state lines, to sell elsewhere? Will recreational marijuana flow from the hands of legal adult consumers to teenagers? Will taxes from pot sales match optimistic predictions of a windfall for state budgets? What will happen to the black market for marijuana?

Skeptical federal authorities are also paying attention. Although marijuana remains illegal under federal law, the Justice Department has given a tentative approval for Colorado and Washington to move ahead with regulating marijuana. But it warned that federal officials could intervene if the state regulations failed to keep the drug away from children, drug cartels or federal property, and out of other states.

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PRAGUE — An official says an explosion has rocked Prague's flat of a Palestinian diplomat in the Czech Republic.

Prague fire spokeswoman Pavlina Adamcova says Wednesday's explosion occurred in the Suchdol neighborhood in the Prague 6 district.

Police could not immediately be reached for comment.

Prague rescue service spokeswoman Jirina Ernestova says one person was taken to a hospital for unspecified injuries.

The Czech public radio says the flat belongs to Palestine's ambassador to Prague.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — In the summer of 2011, 19 undergraduates at the University of North Carolina signed up for a lecture course called AFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina. The professor was Julius Nyang'oro, an internationally respected scholar and longtime chairman of the African and Afro-American studies department.

It is doubtful the students learned much about blacks, North Carolina or anything else, though they received grades for papers they supposedly turned in and Mr. Nyang'oro, the instructor, was paid $12,000. University and law-enforcement officials say AFAM 280 never met. One of dozens of courses in the department that officials say were taught incompletely or not at all, AFAM 280 is the focus of a criminal indictment against Mr. Nyang'oro that was issued last month.

Eighteen of the 19 students enrolled in the class were members of the North Carolina football team (the other was a former member), reportedly steered there by academic advisers who saw their roles as helping athletes maintain high enough grades to remain eligible to play.

Handed up by an Orange County, N.C., grand jury, the indictment charged Nyang'oro with "unlawfully, willfully and feloniously" accepting payment "with the intent to cheat and defraud" the university in connection with the AFAM course — a virtually unheard-of legal accusation against a professor. 

The indictment, critics say, covers just a small piece of one of the biggest cases of academic fraud in North Carolina history. That it has taken place at Chapel Hill, known for its rigorous academic standards as well as an athletic program revered across the country, has only made it more shocking.

Two reports on the activities of the African and Afro-American studies department, one internal and one conducted by a former governor of North Carolina, James G. Martin, found problems with dozens of courses and said as many as 560 unauthorized grade changes were suspected of having been made — often with forged faculty signatures — dating back to 1997. The investigations began after a 2012 report by The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.

Mr. Nyang'oro, who ran the department for 20 years, remains the mystery at the center of the case. Mr. Nyang'oro, who retired from the university in July 2012, is accused in the reports of teaching dozens of barely existent or questionably led classes and presiding over a department in which grades were illicitly changed, professors' signatures were forged and athletes routinely enrolled in laughably lax classes.

But with each new disclosure, even as his reputation has been savaged, Mr. Nyang'oro has not explained himself.

"Julius has provided no help in answering our questions," said Jay M. Smith, a history professor and a vocal critic of the way the university has handled the matter. "He's been in a cone of silence for the last three years."

Athletes, including many from the popular and revenue-producing football and basketball teams, made up nearly half of the students enrolled in the dubious courses.

The university says the blame rests firmly and exclusively with two people: Mr. Nyang'oro and Deborah Crowder, the department manager, who retired in 2009 after 30 years there.

Ms. Crowder had close ties to the athletic program and has long been in a relationship with a former North Carolina basketball player, Warren Martin. The two reports on the department's activities each named Ms. Crowder as being involved in the infractions. Ms. Crowder, who has not been charged, did not return messages left on her home voice mail.

Some on campus and elsewhere are skeptical that just two people could carry out the questionable activities on their own. "How in the world could a scam like this go on for so long, and no one knew about it?" asked Mr. Smith, the professor.

Michael O. West, a friend and onetime North Carolina colleague of Mr. Nyang'oro, believes the university has made him a scapegoat. "My view is that the university is portraying these two people, Nyang'oro and Crowder, as a couple of rogue employees," Mr. West said.

"But I am sure there were many people in the athletic department and elsewhere who were aware of it," he added. "These two people are being made to take the blame and put out to dry, when the problem was institutional."

Mr. Nyang'oro's lawyer, Bill Thomas, told reporters in December that the case would give his client a chance to explain himself. "There's been one side of this story that has been put forth in the press, but he's going to have an opportunity to present his side," Mr. Thomas said.  

Ben Curtis/Associated Press

A displaced girl carrying water to a United Nations compound in South Sudan. Violence there has uprooted 180,000 people.

JUBA, South Sudan — Few moments conjure as much fear in South Sudan as the massacre of Bor.

Long before South Sudan became a nation, while it was still in the throes of one of Africa's longest civil wars, fighters tied to a leader named Riek Machar stormed through the city of Bor in 1991, killing 2,000 fellow southerners in an attack that would lay bare the deep divisions in this impoverished land.

Since then, the people of South Sudan have had periods of peace, compromise and even shared jubilation at the birth of their nation in 2011. Mr. Machar himself became vice president, apologizing for the massacre.

But there was never a real and lasting reconciliation between the factions threatening to pull this new nation apart, and on Tuesday fighters allied with Mr. Machar charged into Bor once again.

"This was a fire waiting to be ignited," said John Prendergast of the Enough Project, a nonprofit antigenocide organization. "It was just when and not if."

When leaders from around the world pressed South Sudan into existence — seeing its creation as the best way to end decades of war with its neighbor to the north, Sudan — they were well aware that the bitter internal rivalries in the south had never been fully resolved.

To help this fledgling nation's chances, international donors like the United Nations and the United States have pumped in billions of dollars of aid, hoping to create a viable country from one of the poorest places on earth. But what has long been missing, analysts say, is any reliable structure for settling conflicts in a way that would keep the new nation from spinning into a civil war of its own.

"If those issues weren't resolved beforehand, when there was still leverage to keep people at the table, then you were really sowing the seeds for the deterioration of any agreement that was going to be reached," said Charles Stith, an American ambassador to Tanzania during the Clinton administration.

The fighting now tearing at the seams of this nation broke out in a military barracks here in Juba, the capital, on Dec. 15. President Salva Kiir accused Mr. Machar of staging a coup attempt. Mr. Machar denied it but fled to the bush, demanding that Mr. Kiir resign. Fighting between forces loyal to each side quickly spread to at least 20 cities, displacing 180,000 people and killing at least 1,000, probably more, many of them civilians.

But the makings of a crisis existed well before then, in the tenuous marriage of convenience that placed the hopes of this country in the hands of political rivals who often shared long and tortured pasts.

"We didn't suggest who should be No. 1, 2 or 3 in the government; that was their own" choice, said a senior American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the negotiations years before independence. "They accepted Riek Machar back into the government."

Instead of governing through strong institutions, many power brokers and generals in this nation still essentially command their own forces, their loyalties to the government often determined by their cut of national oil revenues.

"It is an extortion racket with bargaining ongoing on a regular basis, with either violence or the threat of violence" as a form of negotiation, said Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

When things break down, the situation quickly plunges into violence. Rebel forces attacked Bor on Tuesday, engaging in fierce fighting with government troops over the city, a strategic location seen as a gateway to Juba. Col. Philip Aguer, a South Sudanese military spokesman, said the fighting was "very intense," while a spokesman for the United Nations said the rebels had captured an airstrip and a major crossroads leading to the capital.

Jacob Achiek Jok, 29, fled Bor on Tuesday morning when the fighters were about to enter town. Many other terrified residents tried to flee as well, he said, either by road or across the White Nile. Some did not make it.

"Many people drowned," Mr. Jok said. "They are normal citizens, not soldiers."

GRENOBLE, France — Retired Formula One champion Michael Schumacher's condition was stable overnight, but the brain injury he suffered during a skiing accident in the French Alps is still critical, his manager said Wednesday.

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Sabine Kehm told reporters that his condition has not changed since doctors said he showed small signs of improvement on Tuesday.

Schumacher, who turns 45 on Friday, suffered critical head injuries when he fell and struck a rock while skiing. He has since undergone two brain operations and remains in a medically induced coma.

"The good news for today is ... there's no significant changes," Kehm told reporters gathered outside the Grenoble hospital where he is being treated.

"However, it is still very early, and the situation overall is critical," she added.

Doctors have refused to give a prognosis for Schumacher, saying they are focused on his immediate care. They are trying to reduce swelling in his brain by keeping him in a coma and lowering his body temperature to between 34 and 35 degrees Celsius (93.2 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit).

Kehm said Schumacher was surrounded by his family and that there is always somebody with him.

Schumacher is the most successful F1 driver in history, racking up a record 91 race wins. He retired from Formula One last year after garnering an unmatched seven world titles.

His accident has drawn immense media attention, and Kehm confirmed Wednesday that earlier in the week security at the hospital stopped a journalist who was posing as a priest from approaching Schumacher.

Schumi, as his fans affectionately call him, was famously aggressive on the track and no less intense off-hours. In retirement, he remained an avid skier, skydiver and horseback rider.

TOKYO — A Japanese cabinet member visited a shrine seen by critics as a symbol of Tokyo's wartime aggression on Wednesday, pouring salt on a fresh wound after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pilgrimage there last week drew sharp criticism from China and South Korea.

Internal Affairs Minister Yoshitaka Shindo said he thought his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine was unlikely to become a diplomatic issue, Kyodo news agency reported.

Beijing and Seoul have repeatedly expressed anger over politicians' visits to Yasukuni, where Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal after World War Two are honored along with those who died in battle.

Both China and Korea suffered under Japanese rule, with parts of China occupied from the 1930s and Korea colonized from 1910 to 1945. Japanese leaders have apologized in the past but many in China and South Korea doubt the sincerity of the apologies, partly because of contradictory remarks by politicians.

Underscoring the deteriorating ties between Asia's two biggest economies, China said its leaders would not meet Abe after he visited Yasukuni on Thursday, the first visit by a serving Japanese prime minister since 2006.

A commentary in China's ruling Communist Party's top newspaper called Abe's actions a threat to peace in the region.

"Abe paying homage at the Yasukuni Shrine is an offensive, open provocation, and announces to the world his old imperial dreams. The international community must strike back strongly and be on guard for the ashes of Japan's militarism to reignite," the paper said.

Ties between Japan and China were already precarious due to a simmering row over ownership of a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.

China has said it is willing to talk to Japan about the issue, but has accused Abe of not being serious about wanting to resolve the dispute.

Abe, a staunch conservative, has called for dialogue with China since returning to power a year ago, but Beijing had shown no inclination to respond to those overtures even before the latest Yasukuni controversy.

Experts see his visit as an attempt to recast Japan's wartime past in a less apologetic light and revive national pride.

(Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie)