The biggest German bank, Deutsche Bank, has been implicated in a US tax evasion investigation, a press report alleged on Wednesday.

The biggest German bank, Deutsche Bank, has been implicated in a US tax evasion investigation, a press report alleged on Wednesday.

Doctors in Sicily have been claiming state health benefits for some 51,000 patients who have remained on their lists despite being dead, media reported Sunday.

An investigation cited in Italian papers by Italy`s financial police found that some 51,287 deceased patients, some of whom had been dead for up to 20 years, still featured on the lists.

KINSHASA, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo has opened an investigation into allegations of violent sexual abuse implicating one of its soldiers in the country's northeast, it said Saturday.

The incident is alleged to have involved a soldier from the mission's base in Bunia in the Ituri district and occurred on the night between November 13 and 14, the mission said in a statement.

It added that 'all allegations of this nature are taken seriously by the mission'.

AMSTERDAM, Oct 22, 2007 (AFP) - Arnaud Lagardere, chief executive of the Lagardere group, insisted Monday he would stay on the board of directors at Airbus manufacturer EADS despite an ongoing insider trading scandal.

Rudiger Grube, his co-chairman of European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS), told shareholders meeting in Amsterdam that 'it was not the proper place to raise questions' about the scandal, but they still went ahead.

ISLAMABAD, Oct 22, 2007 (AFP) - Pakistan's government rejected Monday former premier Benazir Bhutto's demand for international experts to help find those behind last week's devastating suicide attack.

'We reject the demand for involvement of foreign experts in the probe. Our own law enforcement agency personnel are capable of investigating the incident,' Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said.

'In the past also they have investigated attacks on presidents and prime ministers and the culprits were traced,' Sherpao told reporters.

JAKARTA, Oct 22, 2007 (AFP) - The pilot of an Indonesian jet that crash-landed in March, killing 21 people, ignored repeated warnings not to land, a final report into the disaster said Monday.

The Garuda Indonesia Boeing 737 slammed hard onto the runway in Yogyakarta on March 7, careened off the end of the air strip into rice paddies and burst into flames.

Twenty-one people, including five Australians, were killed among the 133 passengers and seven crew on board.

KARACHI, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto on Sunday called for international help with the probe into last week's devastating twin blasts during her homecoming parade that killed 139 people.

'We want the government of Pakistan to seek the assistance of the international community,' she told a group of foreign reporters, including an AFP correspondent, at her home in Karachi.

'They have anti-terrorism experts who have the technical expertise to investigate attacks of this nature,' she said.

KARACHI, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto called for international help Sunday with police investigations into last week's bomb blasts that killed 139 people in Karachi.

'We want the government of Pakistan to seek the assistance of the international community,' she told foreign reporters including AFP.

'They have anti-terrorism experts who have the technical expertise to investigate attacks of this nature,' she said.

KARACHI, Oct 20, 2007 (AFP) - Pakistani police took three people in for questioning Saturday over an attack on former premier Benazir Bhutto's homecoming parade that killed 139 people, an investigator said.

The men had links to a car from which one of the attackers threw a grenade into the parade in Karachi seconds before a suicide bomber blew himself up, he said.

Investigators also quizzed seven militants in jails in Karachi for possible information on Thursday night's blasts, added the investigator.

VANCOUVER, Canada, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - A Canadian schoolteacher accused of sexually abusing boys across Southeast Asia and arrested in Thailand Friday was a 'person of interest' for police in his native province of British Columbia, officials said.

'It appears that he was a person of interest since 2004,' Annie Linteau, a spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), told AFP.

'We're certainly interested here, but we are unable to confirm or deny that there is an ongoing investigation,' Linteau added

MONTREAL, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - A Canadian schoolteacher accused of sexually abusing boys across Southeast Asia and arrested in Thailand Friday was also under investigation in his native province of British Colombia, local media reports said.

Federal authorities have received complaints from residents of the Vancouver area, saying they have been victims of sexual harassment on the part of Christopher Paul Neil, CBC television reported.

But the network said no formal charges had been filed against the man.

LONDON, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Paparazzi photographers had gathered outside a Paris hotel on the night Diana, princess of Wales died because of rumours she was to announce a pregnancy or engagement, a British inquest was told Wednesday.

Sigma picture agency photographer Thierry Orban said in a statement that he had told police he received a call at home from his editor between 9:00 pm and 9:30 pm on the night of August 30, 1997, telling him to go to the hotel where Diana was staying.

LONDON, Oct 15, 2007 (AFP) - The car carrying Diana, princess of Wales and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed may have bumped into another large, dark-coloured car shortly before crashing, the inquest into their deaths heard Monday.

Witness accounts previously have talked about a white Fiat Uno or a similar small vehicle, but Jean-Claude Catheline and his wife Annick said they saw two dark cars travelling at speed side-by-side going into the Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris.

JERUSALEM, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - Israel's attorney general on Sunday ordered a police investigation into political appointments made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he was trade minister, the justice ministry said.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered the corruption probe over Olmert's 'political appointments and assisting political cronies in different public bodies' during his time as trade and industry minister in 2005, the ministry said.

PARIS, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - Arnaud Lagardere, chief executive of the Lagardere group of companies, said Sunday that the French prime minister's office was fully apprised of its controversial sale of shares in the aerospace giant EADS in early 2006.

Speaking to Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, Lagardere answered 'Yes, of course' when asked if then prime minister Dominique de Villepin was aware of the sale.

PARIS, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) - Reports of possible insider trading at Airbus parent company EADS more than a week ago have had little impact on EADS shares, which have since risen 8.0 percent, a trend bolstered by what are seen as more realistic projections from the group and problems at rival Boeing.

Several top executives and corporate shareholders Lagardere and Germany's DaimlerChrysler are suspected of having illegally sold millions of euros in EADS shares before serious production and delivery delays in the Airbus superjumbo A380 jet were disclosed in June 2006.

OTTAWA, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) - An inquiry into allegations that Canada was complicit in the wrongful jailing and torture of three Canadians abroad must be opened to the public or risk becoming irrelevant, the trio said Friday.

The probe, led by retired Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci, began in March behind closed doors to determine if the trio was mistreated abroad and whether Canadian authorities shared intelligence with their counterparts in these countries, as alleged.

PARIS, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Thursday an internal probe had shown her ministry to have been 'beyond reproach' in relation to an insider trading scandal at Airbus parent company EADS.

Lagarde was presenting the findings of an inquiry to determine whether the government knew of problems at Airbus when a state-owned bank, the Caisse des depots et consignations (CDC), purchased EADS shares from the Lagardere group.

LONDON, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - Pictures of a dying Princes Diana were shown in court Thursday as the inquest into her death along with boyfriend Dodi Fayed in 1997 neared the end of a second week.

Jurors were also shown pictures of the paparazzi who took photos after the crash in the Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris, while a witness gave testimony about the famed white Fiat seen in the tunnel shortly before the crash.

PARIS, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - French deputies on Thursday set up a commission of inquiry into whether six Bulgarian medics jailed on charges of infecting children with AIDS in Libya were freed in exchange for French military aid.

The commission is to hear testimony from top aides to President Nicolas Sarkozy to shed light on negotiations that led to the release in July of the five nurses and Palestinian-born doctor after eight years in prison.

FRANKFURT, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - German prosecutors in Munich are pursuing their own probe of possible insider trading at the aerospace group EADS independently of a French investigation, they said Thursday.

German stockmarket watchdog Bafin had launched an enquiry at the same time as one by its French counterpart, the AMF, in 2006, and turned the results over to judicial officials in Munich in July, a chief prosecutor told AFP.

BERLIN, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Suspicion of insider trading at the European aerospace group EADS has sparked much less interest in Germany than in France, the company's other industrial base.

Top EADS directors are less often in the public spotlight here, but some observers say tension between the two interests has encourged German media and even union leaders to circle the wagons against a mooted French offensive.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - The Stockholm prosecutor said Tuesday he had opened a preliminary probe into possible insider trading at stock market operator OMX that may have occurred ahead of an announcement last month of OMX's potential acquisition by Nasdaq and Borse Dubai.

'There were big volumes (traded) and significant price movements,' prosecutor Robert Engstedt told the Swedish news agency TT, referring to trading that took place on September 18 and 19.

PARIS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - A British jury on Tuesday visited the Ritz hotel in Paris, where Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed spent their last hours together before their deaths in a fatal road crash 10 years ago.

On the second and last day of a familiarisation trip to the French capital, the 11 jurors in the inquest into their deaths walked through the corridors of the luxury hotel to the service exit where the couple left in a chauffeur-driven limousine on the night of August 31 1997.

PARIS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - EADS chief executive Louis Gallois is to propose to the EADS board a complete end to stock options for managers following a scandal about insider trading at the company, he said in an interview published Tuesday.

'I had already said ... that I considered the attribution of stock options to managers as a contentious system that ressembles a lottery. I am going to propose to the board their total abolition,' he said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper.

PARIS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Jurors in the British coroner's inquest into the death of Princess Diana retraced her final journey Monday, concluding with a visit on foot to the scene of her fatal crash in a central Paris underpass.

On the first day of a two-day visit, the 11 men and women were driven by coach through the French capital, accompanied by the coroner in charge of the case -- Lord Justice Scott Baker -- and a team of court officials, lawyers and journalists.

MACON, France, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday pledged to fully investigate whether the government had a hand in a massive insider trading scandal at Airbus parent company EADS.

Sarkozy also said that those found guilty of illegally selling shares 'should be punished in a manner that is proportionate to the amount that was stolen.'

'I will make sure the investigation leaves no stone unturned to determine what the responsibilities of the state were at that time,' said Sarkozy in an address to factory workers in the Burgundy town of Macon.

PARIS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Jurors in the British coroner's inquest into the death of princess Diana on Monday started retracing her final, ill-fated journey from the Paris Ritz to the underpass where her chauffeur-driven Mercedes crashed.

Travelling under heavy police escort, the 11 jurors set off at around 2:15 pm (1215 GMT) from the Ritz Hotel on Paris' Place Vendome, where Diana, 36, and her 42-year-old Egyptian boyfriend Dodi Fayed dined the night they died.

SRINAGAR, India, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Indian Kashmir's High Court on Monday asked police to investigate the involvement of top officials, including a state minister, in an alleged prostitution racket.

Authorities uncovered the racket in April last year involving over 40 women and young girls whose clients allegedly included politicians, bureaucrats, security men and businessmen in the conservative Muslim-majority state.

PARIS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - The French Socialist opposition on Monday called for a commission of inquiry to shed light on the government's role in an insider trading scandal at Airbus parent company EADS.

The commission would determine whether the government knew of problems at Airbus when a state-owned bank purchased EADS shares from the Lagardere group, said Socialist Party spokesman Bruno Le Roux.

PARIS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Jurors in the British coroner's inquest into the death of princess Diana arrived early Monday afternoon at the Paris Ritz Hotel, where they were to start retracing her final, ill-fated journey.

After flying into Paris on a chartered flight, 11 jurors arrived on a bus with two police motorcycle escorts at the Ritz, where Diana, 36, and her 42-year-old Egyptian boyfriend Dodi Fayed dined the night they died.

FRANKFURT, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Airbus chief executive Thomas Enders said in an interiew Monday he felt he had been 'treated like a criminal and stigmitised' by 'unfounded criticism' linked to a probe into insider trading at parent group EADS.

The German news weekly Focus interviewed Enders about the affair and quoted him as saying he had done nothing wrong.

PARIS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - The British coroner's inquest into the death of princess Diana moved to Paris on Monday, with jurors hearing the case set to retrace her final, ill-fated journey.

The long-awaited hearing began at London's High Court last week, with 11 jurors selected to pore over the much-aired evidence as to how Diana, 36, and her 42-year-old Egyptian boyfriend Dodi Fayed died 10 years ago.

BAGHDAD, Oct 7, 2007 (AFP) - A joint US-Iraqi commission examining the work of private security firms in Iraq on Sunday held its first meeting, three weeks after a fatal shootout involving American contractor Blackwater.

The commission is looking at the September 16 incident when Blackwater employees opened fire in central Baghdad killing at least 10 Iraqis as well as at the wider business of private security contractors in Iraq.