BAGHDAD: Iraq today succumbed to Washington's pressure and agreed to let UN weapons inspectors resume their work, thereby averting major US air strikes. Iraq's pledge allowing UN inspectors came in a letter from its deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, expressing his country's wish to co-operate with the UN s inspectors. However, the military buildup in the region was continuing with additional warplanes departing the US for the region as part of forcing Iraq to subscribe to all their demands.

Wildlife dinner

HYDERABAD: Main accused in the controversial Venison dinner row in Khammam District of Andhra Pradesh was granted bail even as the high-level official inquiring into the incident sought for more time to complete the probe. K V Satyanarayana, the host who surrendered before forest officials for his alleged involvement of serving the meat of endangered species at the October 13 feast was granted conditional bail by adistrict court yesterday.

Urea scam

HYDERABAD: P V Prabhakara Rao, son of former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao, today failed to respond to the summons of Enforcement Directorate (ED). Rao was asked to appear before the ED officials here in connection with the 133 crore rupee urea scam. A notice to this effect was pasted at the main entrance of Rao's Jubilee Hills residence yesterday as neither Rao nor his family members were traced in the city.

Armymen killed

INDORE: Two armymen, including a senior officer, were killed when their power hang glider crashed into a pond in Hema Range of nearby Mhow during a training flight today. The deceased were identified as Lt Col Viman Saha and signalman D Panigrahi attached to the Mhow Military College of Telecommunication Engineering. Their bodies were fished out from the pond and a postmortem was performed.

Tremor in Koyna

NEW DELHI: An earthquake of slight intensity hit some areas of Maharashtra this evening.

The tremor recorded 3.0on the Richter scale was reported from Koyna region at 1707 hours.