■CANADA
Envoy claims betrayal
A former UN special envoy to Niger who was kidnapped and later freed says he believes someone in the government of Niger or possibly with the UN betrayed him to al-Qaeda. Former Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in an interview to be broadcast on Tuesday and yesterday evenings that someone “shopped” him to his captors. Fowler spent four months in captivity after being taken at gunpoint last December. The now retired diplomat blames a possible leak of his whereabouts. Only the government and the UN knew his itinerary. “I know somebody shopped me,” Fowler said.
■UNITED STATES
Blood donor nears record
A New York man is donating his 320th pint (0.5 liter) of blood this week, making him one of two people in the US who has given 40 gallons (151.4 liters). Al Fischer, 75, of Massapequa planned to reach the milestone on Tuesday, 58 years after he started giving blood. According to a New York Blood Center official, only Maurice Wood, 83, has donated more. Wood is a retired railroad inspector from St Louis. Fischer, a print shop operator, donates blood about six times a year. He says he and Wood are engaged in a friendly rivalry and last spoke to each other a few months ago.
■IRAQ
Tribunal seeks audit arrest
A top court has issued an arrest warrant for a senior anti-corruption official. Abdul-Basit Turki, the head of Iraq’s Board of Supreme Audit, one of a handful of government agencies dedicated to fighting widespread corruption, stands accused of “wasting national funds in the past government,” Iraqi High Tribunal chief judge Aref al-Shaheen said late on Monday. However, in a news conference on Tuesday, Turki said he was himself investigating officials at the court over accounting irregularities and he questioned the timing of the warrant. Last year, only Somalia and Myanmar were seen as more corrupt than Iraq, Transparency International figures showed.
■ARGENTINA
Murder charges reinstated
An appeals court on Tuesday overturned the dismissal of murder charges against former president Fernando de la Rua in the deaths of five protesters during violent street demonstrations in 2001.
■ARGENTINA
Largest crater field claimed
Argentina can lay claim to the world’s largest crater field, a volcanic area in Patagonia known as the “Devil’s Slope,” according to a study released on Tuesday. Covering 400km2, the Bajada del Diablo field is peppered with at least 100 depressions left by the collisions of meteorites or comets 130,000 to 780,000 years ago, the study found. “Each crater measures between 100m and 500m in diameter and is between 30m and 50m deep, which makes it the biggest such field in the world in terms of the size of the craters,” said Rogelio Acevedo of the Southern Center for Scientific Investigations.
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