Washington, September 25 : A man has filed a lawsuit in Baltimore against a Maryland doctor for allegedly stapling his rectum shut during an operation, which caused him to go without defecating for 17 days.

Ronald Watkins, 64, of West Virginia, claims that the 2004 surgery Frederick County doctor Manuel Casiano carried out has left him with permanent bowel problems.

“The reason for suing Dr. Casiano is very simple: His rectum was stapled shut,” baltimoreexaminer. com quoted Julia Lodowski, who with attorney Emily Malarkey is representing Watkins and his wife, Brenda, as saying.

London, Sept 25 : A gun that brought about the First World War will be unveiled at the Imperial War Museum.

The gun, on display for the first time in the UK, was used in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28 1914. The assassination was the spark that started First World War.

The gun was part of the evidence gathered by police after they were used by a small group of Serbian nationalists who wanted to attract attention to their cause.

The consequences of the bullets fired from the small black pistol by a teenager not only took the lives of Franz Ferdinand and his wife but also led to the death of millions of people across Europe.

Brussels - A donors' conference dedicated to rebuilding Georgia's civilian infrastructure after August's war with Russia is set to open in Brussels on October 21 or 22, Belgian officials confirmed Thursday.

The one-day conference, which was proposed by European Union heads of state and government at an emergency summit on September 1, is intended to gather aid pledges from the international community, Belgian Foreign Ministry officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The announcement of the conference comes 10 days after the European Commission, the EU's executive, pledged a package of 500 million euros (733.7 million dollars) in aid for the post-war reconstruction and economic recovery of Georgia.

Washington, Sept 25 : In the wake of the recent surge in tensions with Pakistan over unilateral strikes by US-led forces from across the Afghan border, the US administration has reportedly called for a review of US strategy in Afghanistan.

A senior Pentagon official said that US President George Bush has ordered a review of US strategy in Afghanistan, amid rising insurgent violence and tensions with Pakistan.

The review is being led by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, a deputy national security adviser, with the participation of senior representatives from the Pentagon and other departments, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Washington, Sept. 25: North Korea is reported to be planning to resume the reprocessing of plutonium, perhaps as soon as next week, raising concerns in Washington.

According to the New York Times, the country is on the verge of restarting a nuclear weapons program whose shutdown had earlier been portrayed by the White House as a significant diplomatic achievement.

U. S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the United States still hoped to preserve a hard-won agreement that called for the North to dismantle its nuclear reactor.

But North Korea has refused to resume talks, and no new ones are planned.

With both majority Democrats and the US president's own Republican Party lining up against a mammoth 700-billion-dollar rescue plan for Wall Street, US President George Bush was to speak to the nation Wednesday evening (0100 GMT Thursday) to drum up support.

The escalating US financial crisis, which has frozen credit around the world, is now impacting the US presidential campaign, with Republican nominee John McCain, 72, suspending his campaign and heading back to Washington Thursday in a bid to break the legislative logjam.

Democratic nominee Obama said that he did not want to "confuse" Congress with presidential politics and would return to the Senate from the campaign trail only at the request of his Democratic Party's legislative leaders.