World Highlights

O The White House chose not to challenge a prosecutor's disclosure that President George W. Bush authorised top official Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose intelligence on Iraq in 2003, as Libby alleges. Spokesman Scott McClellan noted that the White House released declassified portions of an intelligence report at around the same time, July 2003.

O A woman suicide bomber was killed at a mosque in Turkey's Black Sea city of Ordu and her colleague was injured when a bomb they were carrying blew up, media reports said. Two other people were also injured in the blast in the toilets of a Koran teaching facility, next to the mosque, state-run agency Anatolian said, citing police.

O An Iberian Airlines flight bound for Madrid turned back to the Netherlands yesterday after a passenger on board threatened to blow up the plane, police said. All 165 passengers were evacuated when the plane landed safely at Amsterdam's Schipol airport, a spokesman at Schiphol's police department said.

O Hundreds of Nepali students fought pitched battles with police, braving tear-gas, hurling stones and chanting pro-democracy slogans as a four-day general strike against the king's rule entered its second day. The strike and protests have been called by the Himalayan kingdom's seven main political parties in what they hope will be a definitive campaign against King Gyanendra, who sacked the government and took control of the nation last year.

O Thailand's ruling party wants to invoke the "spirit" of the constitution rather than its exact letter to break a deadlock caused by the opposition's election boycott, Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon said. However, speaking to foreign reporters two days after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra stepped aside to help solve the crisis, he failed to explain how to get around a rule that says parliament must be full for a government to be formed.