Washington - International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has reportedly apologized to staff over an improper affair with a married subordinate.

Meanwhile, the IMF on Monday said an inquiry into whether he abused his position will be completed by the end of the month.

Strauss-Kahn met Friday with the IMF's executive board, which has the power to dismiss him, and has been "fully supportive" of the investigation, according to a statement from Shakour Shaalan, who leads the 24-member board.

Sydney - Australian politicians learned Tuesday that the country's oldest practising lawyer had died aged 100 and that they would need to look for a new exemplar of grateful employment and retirement postponed.

When he succumbed to a stroke last week, George Bilbie was still working in the Newcastle law firm that he founded in 1944.

"I'm one of the luckiest people out there," Bilbie said a few months before his death. "When you are brought up poor, you appreciate everything you get."

Wellington - New Zealand's inflation rate, boosted by soaring petrol prices, hit an 18-year high of 5.1 per cent in the 12 months ending September 30, official figures revealed Tuesday.

The consumers price index rose 1.5 per cent in the September quarter, Statistics New Zealand said.

The figures came as no surprise to analysts, who said that the inflation rate was likely to have peaked with consumer prices for fuel and food already beginning to ease.

Amsterdam - Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who was convicted for the so-called Lockerbie disaster, is terminally ill with cancer and expected to die within "weeks or months," a Dutch documentary filmmaker told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa early Tuesday.

Libyan former intelligence agent al-Megrahi, 56, was sentenced for life imprisonment in 2001 for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

A terrorist bomb on board the aircraft brought the plane down over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing some 270 people.

The Dutch documentary maker says he was given the information about al-Megrahi by "reliable sources close to a Libyan delegation."

Sydney - Australi