WORLD BRIEFS

MALI: City scoured for jihadists

Malian soldiers scoured the city of Gao on Monday for remnants of the radical Islamic fighters who engaged in an hours-long fight with soldiers before French and Malian forces regained control. Sunday's brazen assault marked the first time the jihadists had penetrated the city since they fled two weeks ago. The al-Qaida-linked militants had ruled Gao for nearly 10 months. National police Lt. Col. Salihou Maiga said 14 suspects had been arrested and would be transferred to Bamako.

EUROPE: Meat imports pose problems

A maze of trading among meat wholesalers has made it increasingly difficult to trace the origins of food, enabling horse meat disguised as beef to be sold in frozen meals across Europe. On Monday, Romanian officials scrambled to defend two plants implicated in the scandal, saying any fraud was committed elsewhere. France says Romanian butchers and Dutch and Cypriot traders were part of a supply chain that resulted in horse meat being labeled as beef before it was included in frozen lasagna, moussaka and the French equivalent of Shepherd's Pie. Horse meat is largely taboo in Britain and some other countries. In France it is sold in specialty butcher shops. Authorities aren't worried about health effects, but it has unsettled consumers across Europe.

LIBERIA: Crash kills Guinea officers

Eleven bodies, one of them Guinea's army chief of staff, were pulled from the wreckage of a military plane that crashed in Liberia on Monday. Officers were headed to Liberia's Armed Forces Day celebrations. The plane went down in Charlesville, 28 miles south of Monrovia.

MYANMAR: Hacking of journalists denied

The government denied on Monday that it was behind a possible attempt to hack into the email accounts of journalists working for foreign and local media who Google warned might have been the targets of "state-sponsored attackers."