World
Most of the US soldiers hurt in the downing of a transport helicopter Sunday arrived at a military hospital in Germany for treatment as their grim colleagues guarded the wreckage site. None of the casualties were considered to have life-threatening injuries, reports said. Meanwhile, Tariz Aziz, Iraq's former deputy prime minister, told US interrogators that Saddam Hussein failed to order a determined resistance to US attack because he was convinced by French and Russian officials that they could block a war at the UN, the Washington Post reported.
The long-awaited draft constitution of postwar Afghanistan was made public, its next-to-last formal step before being subjected to ratification in a national referendum next June. The draft now goes to a grand council of elders for debate. It envisions an Islamic republic to be governed by a president, vice president - but not a prime minister - and a two-house legislature, half of whose members must be women.
Share prices in Russian oil giant Yukos jumped immediately on the Moscow stock exchange after its chief announced from jail that he'd resign. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who faces fraud and tax-evasion charges in a case seen as having deep political overtones, said he hoped to dedicate himself to a charity he founded to help build democracy in Russia. He was arrested at gunpoint Oct. 25. Critics say he was chosen as a target by President Vladimir Putin because of his rising political clout and to send a message to other like-minded business leaders.
The widely forecast split began in the world's Anglican Communion over the consecration of an openly homosexual bishop in the US. To the dismay of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the church's leader, the first to announce the severing of ties to the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire over the elevation of the Rev. Eugene Robinson Sunday were the Anglican archbishops of Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda. In Australia, Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney said the split was "a tragedy, but necessary if the truth is to be preserved" because homosexuality "is against God's word."
