A round-up of the day's world news
US forces deny killing Iraqi civilians
BAIJI: Iraqi police said yesterday that a US helicopter airstrike killed eight civilians, including two children, but US forces said the six adults killed were militants suspected of links to a bombing network.
News of Wednesday's incident north of Baghdad broke on a day when the top US commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, said he expected to make further troop cuts by September.
The US Senate approved a further $165 billion to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year after lawmakers rejected proposed timetables for withdrawing US troops from Iraq. - (Reuters)
Police arrested after Exeter blast
LONDON:Police said they had arrested an injured man after a small bomb exploded at a restaurant in the centre of Exeter yesterday, and had found and defused another device nearby.
The blast, described as "small", happened shortly before 1pm at the branch of the Giraffe restaurant chain in the Princesshay shopping mall. A 22-year-old man was slightly injured in the incident at the restaurant and was taken to hospital where he was arrested. - (Reuters)
Winehouse wins top song prize
LONDON:British singer Amy Winehouse added another trophy to her growing collection yesterday, winning the 2008 Ivor Novello award for best song musically and lyrically with Love is a Losing Game. The annual awards for songwriting and composing are among Britain's most prestigious music prizes.
But the singer, who has battled drink and drugs, arrived too late to collect her award. Her father Mitch, who accepted the award in her absence, told the audience she was "getting better". - (Reuters)
French workers on one-day strike
PARIS:Hundreds of thousands of French workers took to the streets yesterday in a one-day strike over pension reform, just as the government moved to contain port and oil depot blockades by fishermen angry at rising fuel prices.
France's five main labour unions led protests against plans to make employees work for 41 rather than 40 years before they are entitled to a full pension. The strike did not result in a feared public transport gridlock - the unions themselves were split while the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, stood firm on his promise to reform a pensions system that France can no longer afford. - (Guardian service)
Exam papers provide answers
LONDON:It sounds like every student's dream - turning over an exam paper and finding the answers on the back. But that was what happened to 12,000 lucky teenagers when they sat their GCSE music exam last week.
The OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA) examination board admitted yesterday that, because of a "printing error", papers sent to schools had answers to questions on the back page. "All exam papers have a copyright statement dealing with source material on the back page," an OCR spokeswoman said.
"This one in particular had more detail than is usual in a music paper." - (Reuters)
Bumper harvests won't cut prices
ROME:The world will see bumper harvests this year but that might not be enough to protect the world's poorest countries from food bills four times higher than at the start of the decade, the United Nations forecast yesterday.
Increased plantings and good weather will provide a global wheat crop 8.7 per cent greater than last year, one of the reasons wheat prices have slid some 50 per cent since February, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said. - (Reuters)