Turkey

A group of about 300 Turkish troops have crossed over the border into Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. A senior Iraqi military source said that the Turkish troops were lightly armed and moved into the Gali Rash area, a mountainous district near the border early on Tuesday.

Iraqi leaders complained Monday that Turkey had not coordinated with Baghdad before sending dozens of warplanes to bomb Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq the day before. U.S. officials confirmed that they had prior knowledge of the attack. In Washington, a Pentagon official said the U.S. military had "deconflicted the airspace" in Iraq for the strikes -- that is, the United States made sure that Turkey would have clear use of the skies to enable the bombings.

Opposition is beating the war drums; Turkish public is demanding an operation; Bush is offering an upgraded three-way ‘coordinators' scheme; winter is setting in... Difficult times to make difficult decisions for Erdogan. It must be rather uncomfortable for Recep Tayyip Erdogan being the prime minister of the country nowadays.

Members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq have been leaving the region for Iran to avoid an attack by the Turkish army, a former PKK leader has said. "The PKK has decreased its forces in Iraqi Kurdistan and they are moving to Iran. It is part of PKK tactics that when they feel pressure in one country, they move to another," Osman Öcalan, brother of the now-jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, told UK daily The Independent.

PKK Kurdish rebel group and its sister organization, PEJAK, have been receiving support from the US and Israel, an American journalist claims.

Turkish warplanes have bombed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets along the Iraqi border in southeast Turkey, the country's semi-official Anatolia news agency has said.

PAUL Lee got his liver from an executed Chinese prisoner; Karam in Egypt bought a kidney for his sister for £2,600; in Istanbul Hakan is holding out for £15,200 for one of his kidneys. They are not so unusual: recent figures from the World Health Organisation show a serious shortage of donated organs in richer countries is sending foreigners with end-stage illnesses to poorer places like China, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Colombia and the Philippines to buy a new lease of life.

BEIJING and INSTANBUL—Fear has engulfed Turkey's intelligentsia since the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has canceled a book tour and more than a dozen other writers have been assigned bodyguards.