• Eight crew members were rescued but six were unaccounted for after a tugboat capsized in the North Sea yesterday, British coast guards said. The Bourbon Dolphin, a Norwegian anchor-handling supply tug, capsized with 14 crew on board 75 miles north of Scotland's Shetland Islands, a coast guard spokesman said.

• The head of Turkey's powerful military General Staff called for a military operation in northern Iraq to quash Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding there. But General Yasar Buyukanit, in a rare news conference, added that the army had not asked Parliament to authorise any such operation. Parliament must give its permission for any military operations outside Turkish territory.

• Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promoted prospects for cooperating with rival and neighbour Japan, but urged Tokyo to live up to apologies for wartime brutality and to oppose independence for Taiwan. Mr Wen stressed Beijing's theme of peaceful development to Japan's Parliament as part of a three-day trip weighted more with symbolic gestures than real breakthroughs in feuds over energy, territory and history.

• The European Union will not join a US complaint to the WTO about piracy in China despite agreeing with its substance, a senior European official said, saying talks were a better option. Viviane Reding, the EU Information Society and Media Commissioner, said protecting intellectual property rights was a fundamental concern of the block, China's largest trading partner, but legal action was not the way to go.

• Seven people were killed during security patrols in Nigeria's oil producing Niger Delta, prompting fears militants could strike back, sources said. Five people, including two policemen, were killed in a shootout with criminal gangs on Wednesday in the Emohua district of the oil city of Port Harcourt, police said. The officers were in the area to investigate fighting between rival gangs.