USA
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will be spared accusations of corruption in connection with the massive Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, leaked details of the investigation into the matter indicated. The probe has been headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who turned over his report to Annan Tuesday. But the report, which had yet to be made public, is said to be highly critical of Annan for failing to deal appropriately with a possible conflict of interest in awarding a vital contract to monitor the program to a Swiss company that employed his son, Kojo. Kojo Annan also will be faulted for concealing information about his relationship with the company, Cotecna Inspections of Switzerland, and for deceiving his father, sources familiar with the report said.
By a 5-to-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that victims of retaliation for having complained about the Title IX federal sex-discrimination law can sue their former employers. The case centered on an Alabama man who lost his job as coach of a high school girls' basketball team after complaining that it was denied the same funding, equipment, and facilities as the boys' team.
Although authorities have said little about the investigation of last week's shootings in a Minnesota Indian reservation school, the son of the tribal chairman has been arrested in connection with the case, reports said. Whether the arrest of Louis Jourdain, a student at Red Lake High School and the son of Floyd Jourdain Jr., the chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, points to a potentially wider plot in the shooting was neither confirmed nor denied by the US attorney. But two law-enforcement sources told The Washington Post that the younger Jourdain is suspected of helping to plan the shooting spree by Jeff Weise and had expected to be part of it.
The husband of Terri Schiavo has requested an autopsy after her passing, his lawyer said, and the chief medical examiner for Pinellas County, Fla, has agreed to perform it. Attorney George Felos said Michael Schiavo wants definitive evidence of the extent of brain damage to his wife, who was in her 12th day without food or water as the Monitor went to press.
The Monitor's Clay Bennett has won first place in the Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition for the second time in four years. The award carries a $5,000 prize, to be presented next month by the sponsor, Columbia College of Chicago. The contest, which drew 72 entrants and more than 200 cartoons this year, is in memory of Pulitzer Prize-winner John Fischetti, who worked for the former New York Herald Tribune, the former Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Sun-Times before his passing in 1980.