A lawyer for a woman sentenced to be stoned appealed before an Islamic court in northern Nigeria on Wednesday against her conviction for adultery. Daso Adamu (25) contested her conviction on the basis that the father of her six-month-old child was a husband she divorced in 2001. The court in Ningi village in Bauchi state is expected to rule next month.

The Israeli government was forced to postpone the annual budget vote in Parliament on Wednesday amid a continuing rebellion in the ruling Likud party over Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip. With opposition support, the prime minister won a separate vote to provide compensation to about 8 500 Jewish settlers who would be forced to leave under the unilateral disengagement plan.

Most governments around the world reacted to the news of George Bush’s re-election on Sunday with a diplomatic straight bat. France, Germany and other European countries pledged to work with the new administration, while there were typically divided views in the Middle East.

Lawyers from both presidential campaigns arrived in Ohio on Wednesday morning to find that weeks of preparations for a legal battle over provisional ballots were redundant after the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, conceded the race. The state remained Kerry’s last chance to clinch the presidency on election night.

There are no great expectations in Washington that a second-term Bush administration will have a radically different complexion from the first term. George Bush values loyalty and prefers to stick to a tried and tested team. However, after four years in office, much of it at war, some of his Cabinet are anxious to move on.

Crucial evidence for the forthcoming trials of Saddam Hussein and other senior Iraqi officials is likely to have been lost or tainted because United States-led forces have failed to safeguard official documents and the remains of victims in mass graves, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch says in a report out on Thursday.