Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf ruled out a U.N. inquiry into the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, as demanded by her party, saying that Pakistan should not be compared to Lebanon.

The health of Indonesia's ex-dictator Suharto improved today, a day after he suffered multiple organ failure, as the government said a major graft case against him would be settled out of court.

New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary, together with Nepal's Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, on May 29, 1953 became the first to scale the 29,028 foot (8,848 metre) summit of Mount Everest.