France French President Jacques Chirac appointed close aide Dominique de Villepin as his new prime minister, scrambling to pick up the pieces after the disastrous referendum defeat of the EU constitution. Netherlands The Dutch campaign on the EU constitution ended its last day with the "no" camp widening its lead and threatening to deliver a killer punch to the treaty three days after France's emphatic rejection of the text. Russia Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of the Yukos oil firm and once the richest man in Russia, was sentenced to nine years in prison following conviction on charges including tax evasion and fraud in a landmark trial critics have called a Kremlin-inspired vendetta. US President George W. Bush hit out at critics of the US 'war on terror' saying that a report accusing him of setting up a "gulag" for detainees was absurd. US US President George W. Bush said "some progress" had been made in trying to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions and diplomacy remained the approach in convincing North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. Iraq Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari vowed to beef up security in the war-weary country, as US President George W. Bush said Washington and its Iraqi allies were making progress against the insurgency. Mideast Palestinian officials delayed partial re-elections in the Gaza Strip to stave off a new crisis between Hamas and Fatah, sparked when the fundamentalist group threatened to boycott the polls. Pakistan Six workers at US fast food outlet KFC died when it was torched by a mob protesting the Al-Qaeda-linked suicide bombing of a mosque in the Pakistani city of Karachi that killed five others, police said. Finland Finnish mediators are to draw up an outline of a long-sought peace deal between Aceh separatists and the Indonesian government after winding up a fresh round of talks here, they said. Sudan A second aid worker for Medecins Sans Frontieres has been arrested in Sudan over the release of a report on rape in the war-torn Darfur region, the group said, drawing a strong rebuke for Khartoum from the UN's human rights chief. Libya Libya's high court delayed a ruling on an appeal by six foreign medics sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus in a case that has raised international concern. China A senior journalist for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper detained since last month has confessed to being a spy for foreign intelligence organs, China said, in a charge that can carry the death sentence.