¤ The Afghan government said yesterday it hoped for a peaceful resolution to a revolt by hundreds of inmates of Kabul's main prison. Four prisoners have been killed and 38 wounded since more than 1,000 prisoners took over parts of the Pul-i-Charkhi prison on Kabul's eastern outskirts on Saturday, prisoners told a human rights lawyer. The revolt is led by Taliban commanders and a kidnap gang leader facing a death sentence for the kidnap of an Italian aid worker last year.
¤ The Bush administration yesterday welcomed a proposal by an Arab company for an additional 45-day review of its contested takeover of terminal operations at six major US ports as a reasonable compromise. Dubai Ports World had said it was seeking further review in order to allay US lawmakers' national security concerns about handing management of the port terminals to a company owned by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
¤ The suspected leader of a gang that tortured and killed a Jewish man near Paris appeared before Ivory Coast's state prosecutor yesterday, but the government said extradition to his native France may take a week or more. Police arrested Youssef Fofana, a French citizen, in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan last Wednesday in connection with the brutal death of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, which has triggered a public outcry over anti-Semitism in France.
¤ Two bombs exploded in the southern Iranian cities of Dezful and Abadan yesterday wounding at least six people, officials said. The bombs were planted in the governor's office in both cities, which lie in the province of Khuzestan, the heartland of Iran's oil industry, that has seen tensions between Iranian authorities and the Arab minority over the last year.
¤ Somali gunmen hijacked an Indian-owned dhow off Somalia's coast with 25 crew members aboard, a maritime official said yesterday. The dhow was attacked by two small boats while on route from the southern port of Kismayo to El-Maan, 35 kilometres from the lawless capital Mogadishu on Sunday, Andrew Mwangura, programme coordinator for the Seafarers' Assistance Programme, said.
¤ Germany yesterday denied that its intelligence officials obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's defence plan for Baghdad and passed it on to US commanders a month before the 2003 Iraq invasion. The allegation that two German spies operating in the Iraqi capital before the war provided key military information to the US - at a time when the Berlin government was voicing strong public opposition to a US invasion - appeared yesterday in an article in The New York Times.
¤ The US yesterday rejected a draft resolution for a new UN Human Rights Council as unacceptable unless negotiations were reopened, a move supporters fear might sink the entire plan. "We are very disappointed with the draft that was produced last Thursday. We don't think it's acceptable," US Ambassador John Bolton told reporters.