Inquiry leads to resignation
New York: A UN officer who gave a contract to Cotecna, the company that employed Kofi Annan’s son Kojo, resigned. Alexander Yakovlev, 52, stepped down a day after the UN opened an inquiry into claims that he had got his own son a job with the company.
Boycott is over
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Nashville: The Southern Baptist Convention has voted at its annual gathering to end an eight-year boycott of the theme parks, films and products of the Walt Disney Co for extending health benefits to partners of its gay employees. (AP)
Microchip man
Washington: Jack Kilby, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the microchip, has died at 81, Texas Instruments, his firm, said. He had cancer. His invention of the semiconductor laid the foundation for the computer industry. (AFP)
Palestinian talks halted
Jerusalem: Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian Prime Minister, cut short a visit to Nablus in the West Bank after gunmen fired in protest at the building in which he was holding talks. A day earlier, talks with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, ended in deadlock.
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Car bombs kill 18
Baghdad: At least 18 people were killed when five car bombs exploded in Baghdad, one at the base of the radical Shia cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr. In other attacks at least 27 people were killed and 73 wounded. (AFP)
Spy plane crashes
Baghdad: The pilot of an American U2 spy plane died when it crashed in the United Arab Emirates after a mission in Afghanistan. The US Air Force Central Command in Iraq did not disclose the exact location. (AFP)
Nurse admits killing three
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Bonn: A nurse confessed to smothering three patients with a pillow and failing to help as three others choked to death, a prosecutor said. The deaths occurred between November 2003 and April this year at a home in the western German city of Bonn. Suspicions were raised after the woman, aged 27, reported four patients as having died of natural causes in her presence. An inquiry has begun into why doctors certified death by natural causes in all the cases. (AFP)
Terrorist trial
Hamburg: Judges in the retrial of Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of helping the September 11 hijackers, are to question an al-Jazeera reporter in London. Al-Qaeda figures told Yosri Fouda the student knew nothing about the attacks.(AFP)
Kurds dispersed
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Ankara: Turkish police fired warning shots and used pepper spray to disperse a stone-throwing crowd in the southeastern city of Van at the funeral of a Kurdish teenager. Fahrettin Inan, 19, had been shot dead by police at a demonstration. (AP)
Chechnya raid
Moscow: The Kremlin sought to rein in government forces in Chechnya after a brutal raid on a village led 1,210 residents to flee into Dagestan. In a rare move, Dmitri Kozak, President Putin’s representative, called for an inquiry and for the perpetrators to be punished.
Actress honoured
Pozzuoli: The actress Sophia Loren broke down when she was given honorary citizenship of the southern Italian town of Pozzuoli, where she grew up. “Thank you, thank you, I don’t know if I deserve it,” Loren, 70, said as she received a ceremonial blue band. (AP)
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