ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish by-election penciled in for February 9 that could open the way for ruling party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan to become prime minister may not be held until March or April, the head of the election board said yesterday. The state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Tufan Algan as saying that wintery weather in February could lead to a low turnout in the election which is a re-run of the November 3 poll in the province of Siirt. The original result was canceled because of voting irregularities. Justice and Development Party (AK) leader Erdogan was excluded from last year’s election because of a political ban stemming from a 1998 conviction for inciting religious hatred. Parliament has since changed the constitution to lift his ban.

BUCHAREST (AP) - Rivers swelling with water from melted snow have flooded several villages in northeast Romania, killing at least one person, authorities said yesterday. A 19-year-old female student was killed Wednesday and two other people went missing when surging waters swept a mountain cabin where they were celebrating the New Year, police said in a statement. Four other people, who were also in the cabin, were rescued by authorities from the waters of the Bistrita River near Poiana Teiului, some 350 kilometers (about 220 miles) north of Bucharest. The surging river also flooded 232 houses in four nearby villages, killing hundreds of farm animals and damaging storage facilities.

At least one out of every two women in Turkey is a victim of domestic violence, a doctors’ organization said yesterday. “According to records available in Turkey, 58 percent of women are subject to beating. But due to customs and traditional reasons, the genuine figures are not available” and could be higher, the Ankara Chamber of Doctors said in a statement issued at a seminar on violence against women. (AFP)

Turkish prosecutors have demanded a seven-year prison term for a 24-year-old bartender charged with the statutory rape of a British teenager who ran away from home to marry him, a news agency reported yesterday. Mehmet Ocak was arrested last month after police found 14-year-old Rachel Lloyd with him in his southeastern hometown of Gaziantep. The two had met last summer while Lloyd vacationed with her family in the Turkish Mediterranean resort of Marmaris. The age of consent in Turkey is 15. Ocak has said he was not aware that Lloyd was only 14. In an indictment, prosecutors charged Ocak with statutory rape of a minor, the Anatolia news agency reported. (AP)

NATO-led peacekeepers yesterday searched a radio station owned by the daughter of Radovan Karadzic, the world’s most wanted war crimes suspect, in his wartime stronghold of Pale. The search, which lasted several hours, was completed in the early afternoon. Some 30 soldiers started their probe around 11 a.m. of the radio station named Sveti Jovan in the town of Pale, just 10 kilometers (6 miles) east of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. Sonja Karadzic refused to disclose what the peacekeepers had discussed with her. The spokesman for the NATO-led troops, Lt. Cmdr. Yves Vanier, claimed that the operation had nothing to do with the search for Radovan Karadzic. (AFP)