A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on Tuesday for deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
The five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor will appeal against their conviction on charges of deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus, the main defence lawyer said on Tuesday.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan lamented on Tuesday that his 10 years as U.N. leader may end up being remembered only for the oil-for-food program for Iraq, saying blame for a financial scandal was misdirected.
One of his top regrets as secretary-general, he said, was that the allegations of U.N. mismanagement of the $64-billion (32.5 billion pounds) Iraqi humanitarian program had been "exploited to undermine the organisation."
Attacks in Iraq on U.S.-led forces, local security personnel and civilians have surged 22 percent to record levels, the Pentagon said in its latest quarterly report on Iraq published on Monday.
The report, published as the United States seeks a new strategy in Iraq, identified the Mehdi Army of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr as the group most damaging to Iraqi security and the biggest catalyst for sectarian violence.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who leaves office in less than two weeks, is making a last-ditch effort to convince Sudan to accept a much stronger peacekeeping force in Darfur, U.N. diplomats said on Monday.
Annan told the U.N. Security Council he was naming former General Assembly President Jan Eliasson of Sweden as a special envoy to Sudan, to serve during the transition to incoming U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who takes over as secretary-general on Jan. 1, council diplomats said.
Ukraine's Naftohaz Ukrayiny won a tender to develop oil and gas deposits in Egypt.
The Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Monday that the international tender was to develop deposits at Alam El Shawish East in the western Egyptian desert.
Former CIA Director Robert Gates was officially sworn in as U.S. secretary of defense on Monday, replacing embattled Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who was under fire for his handling of the Iraq war.
Gates was sworn in at 7:03 a.m. (1203 GMT) by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in the chief of staff's office, a White House spokeswoman said.
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