World Highlights

¤ East Timor's embattled Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, resigned yesterday, saying he would share responsibility for a political crisis that has gripped Asia's newest nation for over two months.

¤ Warren Buffett yesterday signed over much of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uniting the world's two richest people in a bid to fight disease, reduce poverty and improve education. The roughly $30.7 billion donation doubles the Gates Foundation's size to $60 billion .Bill Gates, the world's richest man, co-founded and remains chairman of giant software company Microsoft Corp. Mr Buffett, 75 and the world's second-richest man, built his fortune running Berkshire Hathaway Inc., an insurance and investment company.

¤ Germany's Foreign Minister said yesterday it was inconceivable that the six powers that made an offer of incentives to Iran to encourage it give up uranium enrichment would wait another two months for a response.

¤ Two Afghan boys were wounded yesterday when a suspected Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of US troops, the latest attack in the worst spell of violence in the country since 2001.

¤ Washington says there is evidence North Korea might test-fire its Taepodong-2 ballistic missile, with a range of up to 4,300 km and the US has activated a ground-based interceptor missile defence system in case Pyongyang goes ahead. Although a successful Taepodong-2 launch would not land in Japan, the country remains unprotected for the time being from shorter-range missiles, such as North Korea's Rodong.

¤ A suicide car bomber rammed a Pakistani paramilitary checkpost yesterday, killing at least six troopers in a tribal region where the army has been fighting al Qaeda and pro-Taliban militants for months, officials said.

¤ Bomb attacks at two crowded Iraqi markets killed and wounded dozens of people yesterday, a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki unveiled a national reconciliation plan. A bomb in a bag exploded in the market in Hilla, a mainly Shi'ite town south of Baghdad, killing a number of people. Around the same time, a bomb strapped to a parked motorcycle killed seven people at a market in a mainly Shi'ite village northeast of Baghdad, witnesses and police said.

¤ Congolese militia linked to gunmen holding seven Nepalese UN peacekeepers hostage threatened to order their execution after clashes last week. But some UN sources questioned whether the group of gunmen holding the peacekeepers would take orders from the militia issuing the threat.

¤ The White House confirmed yesterday that the top US military commander in Iraq has drafted a plan for withdrawing American troops but said the proposal was just one option. President George W. Bush, who met with Gen. George Casey on Friday, reiterated that any decision on troop reductions would be based on the situation in Iraq, where a violent insurgency persists more than three years after the US-led invasion.