ARBIL, Iraq, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - Iraq's autonomous Kurds vowed on Friday to fight off any attack on their region, as Turkey mulled a military incursion to crack down on Kurdish rebels.

'We frankly say to all parties if they attacked the region or Kurdistan experiment under whatever pretext, we will be completely ready to defend our democratic experiment and the dignity of our people and the sanctity of our homeland,' said a statement from the region's presidency.

MUMBAI, Oct 15, 2007 (AFP) - Police in India's financial hub Mumbai said Monday they were investigating an email threat to blow up the country's two main stock exchanges.

Officials at the National Stock Exchange, the country's largest, received an email on Monday from an account labelled 'Abdul' that threatened to bomb the bourse and its sister Mumbai stock exchange within 24 hours, police said.

'We are taking this issue seriously and are investigating,' said Anil Deshmukh, senior inspector of the Mumbai police cyber unit.

PRISTINA, Serbia, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - The NATO-led mission in Kosovo (KFOR) Thursday said it would not allow any paramilitary groups endanger security in the province while sensitive talks on its future status unfolded.

The statement came after the reports that an outlawed Serbian paramilitary group threatened an armed uprising if Kosovo gained independence, in an e-mail to NATO.

'Everybody should restrain from making any provocative statements,' KFOR spokesman Colonel Bertrand Bonneau told AFP, after confirming the e-mail.

JAKARTA, Sept 12, 2007 (AFP) - The head of the Indonesian meteorology agency said Wednesday that the threat of a tsunami following a massive earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra island had likely passed.

Asked whether it was safe to say the threat had passed, the agency chief Suharjono told ElShinta radio, 'We think so'.

'Because if we look at the distance, it (the epicentre) is not even 200 kilometres away, and it would only take some 20 minutes to reach the coast,' he said.

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WASHINGTON, Sept 7, 2007 (AFP) - Osama bin Laden on Friday urged his followers to step up the battle to end the Iraq war in his first video appearance since 2004, according to a transcript released by a US-based monitoring service.

Bin Laden says in the video that there were two solutions for stopping the war, according to the transcript from the SITE Intelligence Group which monitors Islamic militant websites.

LAGOS, Sept 5, 2007 (AFP) - A militant coalition in oil-rich southern Nigeria Wednesday threatened attacks against petroleum companies unless they find work for what the activists say are 250,000 jobless graduates.

Samuel Ebiye, spokesman for the group, which calls itself the Grand Alliance for Niger Delta, said the oil companies were in an August 28 letter given until September 7 to choose between offering graduates employment or facing disruption of their operations.

BEIJING, Aug 27, 2007 (AFP) - China poses no threat to Germany or any other nation, Premier Wen Jiabao told visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the pair met for over an hour on Monday.

'China's development is an opportunity, not a threat,' Wen told a joint press conference with Merkel as he briefed reporters on their discussions.

Wen said people who feared China's rapid rise on the world stage needed to understand that the nation was still developing, and that it was struggling with problems such as poverty and population growth.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug 5, 2007 (AFP) - Taliban frustration with the lack of progress in talks on the fate of 21 South Korean hostages turned into fresh threats Sunday, with a spokesman saying more could be murdered at 'any time'.

But Yousuf Ahmadi also said the Taliban was ready to meet with South Korean negotiators in an attempt to reach agreement on the release of the Christian aid workers kidnapped 17 days ago.

'In the past two days there has not been any contact between us and the Koreans or the Kabul administration,' Ahmadi told AFP by telephone.