Sana'a, Yemen - A court in north-western Yemen on Monday convicted a former air force pilot of shooting to death a Jewish man, but said he was "mentally unstable" when he committed the crime.

The court also fined the convict the equivalent of 27,000 dollars in blood money.

Abdul-Aziz al-Abdi, a 40-year-old retired Yemeni Air Force pilot, has confessed to the killing of Moshe al-Nahari, a member of the Jewish minority in the north-eastern town of Raida last December.

The victim's family said it would appeal the verdict as it has been expecting a death sentence to be handed on al-Abdi.

Sana'a, Yemen - Forty-five Africans drowned after a boat carrying them from Somalia across the Gulf of Aden capsized in deep waters off Yemen, the Yemeni Interior Ministry said Saturday.

The boat, carrying 46 would-be migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia, capsized Friday night about 95 kilometres off the south-eastern Yemeni port of Mukalla, the ministry said in a statement.

An Ethiopian passenger and three traffickers were able to get safely to shore, the ministry said. The smugglers were arrested.

Sana'a, Yemen - Yemen's House of Deputies (Parliament) on Thursday approved a two-year postponement of the next parliamentary elections in order to provide time to reform the electoral system.

In an ad hoc session, 200 of the MPs who attended the debate voted for a constitutional amendment to prolong parliament's tenure for two more years, thus postponing elections until April 2011.

A final endorsement for the constitutional change is needed by the parliament within the next two months.

Sana'a, Yemen- Six African migrants drowned and 11 were reported missing and presumed dead after traffickers forced passengers overboard a boat in deep water off Yemen's south-eastern coast, the United Nations refugee agency reported Tuesday.

The boat was carrying 52 passengers - 40 Somalis and 12 Ethiopians - across the Gulf of Aden, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

Yemeni authorities recovered six bodies near Huseysa, about 500 kilometres east of the southern port city of Aden, according to the statement.

Sana'a, Yemen - The leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wahishi, called on Yemeni tribes on Thursday to rebel against the government and to confront security forces pursuing al-Qaeda members in their areas.

In an audiotape posted on Islamist web sites, al-Wahishi linked the clampdown on Jihadists in five desert provinces to the deployment of Western navy forces in the Gulf of Aden to fight piracy.

Sana'a, Yemen  - Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa paid a brief visit to Sana'a on Saturday in the first leg of a tour aimed at healing the rifts among Arab states exposed by the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Moussa held talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on "efforts to achieve inter-Arab reconciliation and solidarity," Yemen's state news agency Saba reported.