A French court on Thursday sentenced two Basques to prison terms of four and eight years for belonging to the armed Basque separatist group ETA. Kizkitza Gil de San Vicente Gurruchaga and Zigor Merodio Larraona were arrested in June 2006 in Bordeaux in a motor vehicle with a false registration plate. Kizkitza Gil de San Vicente Gurruchaga, who has already served nearly four years in prison, was expected to be released from custody within days.

The body of a member of the armed Basque separatist group ETA who disappeared nearly a year ago has been identified in a French morgue, a source close to the case said Thursday. Joan Anza was found dead in a street in the southern city of Toulouse late last April following "health problems", the source said, following identification of his remains in a Toulouse hospital mortuary.

A leader of the ethnic Fulani community in the Nigerian state the scene of weekend massacres accused the Nigerian government Thursday of injustice in the arrest of innocent herdsmen. "We call on the federal government to halt the indiscriminate arrest of herdsmen in Plateau State, especially in Mangu and Jos East local government areas from where almost all the cattle rearers were arrested," Sale Bayari told reporters.

European lawmakers on Thursday formally demanded the "immediate release" of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, seized by Hamas fighters almost four years ago. "This young man lives in a cave, with no visiting rights, no doctor, no lawyer, no mail, no trial (and) no Geneva Convention (of human rights)," said Belgian liberal MEP Frederique Ries.

The Portuguese pilots' union on Thursday announced a six-day strike of its members at the TAP Portugal airline over a pay dispute. "The offers made by the management do not match the aims, the compromises and the legitimate expectations of the pilots," the SPAC union said in a statement. Formal notice of the strike, to be held from March 26 to 31, will be given within three days, the union said.

A team probing the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, western India, in 2002 has summoned the state's Hindu nationalist chief minister for questioning, an investigator said Thursday. This is the first time that Narendra Modi, long accused by human rights groups of turning a blind eye to the pogrom, has been called by investigators to answer questions about riots that killed around 2,000 Muslims.

The UN independent expert on freedom of religion urged governments around the world on Thursday to be on the look-out for "early warning signs" of inter-religious unrest. "The current and recurring cases of inter-communal violence in Nigeria. . . show once again the importance of taking heed of early warning signs and addressing the root causes of religious tensions," special rapporteur Asma Jahangir told the UN Human Rights Council.

The World Food Programme said Thursday it was open to an independent probe into its food aid to Somalia, a day after a UN report said up to half of the food aid to the war-wracked country is diverted. Systematic collusion between transporters of WFP food aid, implementing partners in Somalia and armed groups was behind the food diversion, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia said in a report seen by AFP Wednesday.

A teenage boy was killed and two others injured Thursday when they stepped on a landmine in southeastern Turkey, the theatre of a long-running Kurdish insurgency, media reports said. The explosion occurred as the boys, aged between 13 and 16, were grazing animals outside their village in Sirnak province, close to the border with Iraq, the NTV and CNN Turk news channels said.

The Democratic Republic of Congo government said Thursday it backs plans to start winding up the UN mission in the war-torn country later this year and hopes the pullout will be completed in 2011. The withdrawal will "crown a job well done, when all's said and done, and which had the great merit of helping us end a war that nearly wiped our nation off the map," said Communications Minister Lambert Mende.