The U.N. Security Council will vote, possibly as early as this week, on a measure condemning the worsening violence in Yemen, a senior Western diplomat said Wednesday.

A draft resolution was circulated among the council's 15 members Tuesday evening.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said it carried out attacks that killed 24 Turkish soldiers in retaliation for losses in Turkish air strikes on PKK bases in Iraq, a Kurdish news agency reported.

The attacks were also in response to the arrest of hundreds of Kurdish politicians in urban Turkey, Firatnews quoted the PKK as saying Wednesday.

A Saudi woman convicted of burning her husband to death was beheaded on Wednesday, the interior ministry said.

Ghazala bint Nasser al-Balawi was condemned to death after being found guilty of killing Ali al-Shehri by pouring petrol in his house, setting it on fire after having locked the man inside asleep, it said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

The first 200 French soldiers left Afghanistan on Wednesday, kickstarting troop withdrawals announced three months ago by Paris as part of NATO plans to wind down its combat mission by 2014.

In total, a quarter of France's current troop deployment is scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan before the end of 2012, ahead of a full drawdown of NATO's combat mission scheduled for 2014.

Bundesliga giants Schalke 04 will be without goalkeeper Ralf Faehrmann for the rest of the year after he suffered a major knee injury which is expected to keep him out for up to three months.

The 23-year-old, who replaced Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer in the Schalke goal after his departure to Bayern Munich, badly damaged knee ligaments in the 2-1 home defeat to Kaiserslautern last Saturday.

Korean Grand Prix organizers have warned that the loss-making event is under threat of closure unless Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone gives them a cheaper contract, a report said.

Promoter Park Won-Hwa said the grand prix, held at Yeongam in rural South Jeolla, had made a "big financial loss" and was unpopular with the local community since joining the glitzy Formula One circuit last year.

NBA owners and locked-out players met with a federal mediator for more than 16 hours before the longest contract negotiating session of the bitter money dispute ended Wednesday with no public comments.

The first two weeks of the 2011-2012 NBA season have already been wiped out and NBA commissioner David Stern said that more games could be lost if the two sides, widely split on how to divide revenues, could not make progress Tuesday.

Syrian state television on Wednesday aired a broadcast of what it said was a rally in support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the second city of Aleppo, Syria's economic hub, claiming it was attended by a million supporters of the embattled leader.

The pro-regime gathering in Aleppo comes a week after a similar rally in the capital, Damascus.

The Philippine military accused Muslim rebels Wednesday of killing 19 soldiers on a remote southern island in one of the worst outbreaks of violence between the two sides in years.

The fighting further complicated efforts to end one of Asia's longest insurgencies, with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the military trading accusations of breaking a ceasefire in place to promote peace talks.

Tennis chiefs have played down fears that the Asian swing will become the perennial victim of player pull-outs at the end of the grueling season after high-profile absentees at the Shanghai Masters.

The question of burnout was bubbling away again in Shanghai, missing a clutch of top 20 players including marquee names Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, taking some of the shine off the high-profile tournament which finished Sunday.