A round-up of today's other stories in brief.
Turkey denies attack on Kurds in Iraq
ANKARA -Turkey has denied a report that it had launched a major incursion into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels, but a military source has said troops had conducted a limited raid across the mountainous border.
Rumours yesterday of an invasion rattled financial markets amid growing Turkish anger over the activity of Turkish Kurdish rebels using the mountains of northern Iraq as a refuge.
Washington has urged Ankara to be cautious, fearing conflict in what has been one of the most stable areas of Iraq. - (Reuters)
Nationalists' blog in Russia blocked
MOSCOW -Authorities in Russia for the first time have blocked nationalists from using a popular internet blog to organise anti-migrant demonstrations, according to one of the leaders of a nationalist group.
In January, president Vladimir Putin ordered the security services to stamp out growing extremism and racism partly fuelled by envy towards successful businesses run by Caucasians and central Asians and two wars in Chechnya from 1994. - (Reuters)
Nigerian novel wins Orange prize
LONDON -Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the Orange Prize, one of the literary world's top awards given to women writers, for a novel set in the 1960s Biafran civil war.
Half of a Yellow Sun had been hot favourite with bookmakers to land the £30,000 (€44,260) prize for the writer, also shortlisted for the Orange in 2004 for her debut novel The Purple Hibiscus. - (Reuters)
Magistrates in France to strike
PARIS -French magistrates are to stage a strike next week in a protest at what they see as poor security after a senior judge was attacked and had to be brought to hospital.
Judge Jacques Noris was stabbed by an unemployed woman in the eastern town of Metz on Tuesday, shortly after he ordered that her son remain in his grandmother's care. - (Reuters)
Japan rebuffed on whaling review
AMSTERDAM -A United Nations wildlife meeting has rebuffed a Japanese bid to review protection for whales, which was seen as yet another attempt by Japan to reopen trade in whale products.
Conservation groups have hailed yesterday's decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that came just days after the International Whaling Commission upset Japan by confirming its global moratorium on commercial whaling. - (Reuters)
Dozens die as police battle gangs
NAIROBI -Kenyan police have used whips and tear- gas to battle slum-dwellers in a crackdown on the Mungiki criminal gang blamed for the latest macabre discovery of a severed and skinned head.
"It's very chaotic, I can hear gunshots now," Peter Kamande, who helps run a community group in Nairobi's Mathare shanty town, said.
The latest violence in the narrow, filth-strewn alleys of Mathare - a Mungiki stronghold - came after police killed at least 22 people there in the early hours of Tuesday chasing members of the gang that is wreaking havoc across central Kenya. - (Reuters)
Broadcasters closed in Somalia
MOGADISHU -The Somali government has again shut down three Mogadishu broadcasters, accusing them of supporting terrorism amid a virulent insurgency.
Under orders from prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi's office, broadcasters HornAfrik, Shabelle media and the IQK Koranic radio were closed and their owners questioned. - (Reuters)