■ Ireland
IRA to bail out jailbirds
The Irish government will pay the fines imposed on three Irish Republican Army-linked men to free them from prison in Colombia, a government minister confirmed. Junior Foreign Minister Tom Kitt said Friday the government had given a US$19,500 loan to lawyers for the three men, who were convicted this week of traveling on false passports but acquitted of far more serious charges of training anti-government rebels in Colombia. Kitt stressed that the government expected to be repaid the full cost of the fines.
■ France
Chirac blasts vandals
French President Jacques Chirac on Friday vowed to punish vandals who scrawled swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on 127 graves in a Jewish cemetery near the eastern French town of Colmar. "Anti-Semitism is contrary to all of our values, all of our principles and to all of the ideals of the republic," Chirac said in a statement after the defaced headstones were discovered early in the day by a city worker. The grave stones were marked with swastikas, as well as sayings glorifying Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. On a stone near the cemetery entrance inscribed with a prayer in Hebrew, vandals wrote "Juden raus" [Jews out].
■ United Kingdom
Blair watched me toke up
US film director Robert Altman told a British newspaper yesterday that he smoked cannabis in front of British Prime Minister Tony Blair without any objection at a rock star's party. In an interview with The Guardian, Robert Altman -- the 79-year-old director of Gosford Park and Short Cuts -- said he lit up while dining at rock star Dave Stewart's mansion but added that Blair did not partake. The pair met during Blair's first term of office while the veteran director was in Britain filming the oscar-winning Gosford Park. "We were sitting there smoking grass. He was sitting across from me, so I thought he was pretty cool," Altman said of the encounter.
■ United States
Dead mother kept in car
An Oklahoma woman drove around for days with her mother's decomposing body in the passenger seat of her car, Florida investigators said on Thursday. Sheriff's deputies found the woman's body on Tuesday in a car parked outside a Wal-Mart store in the northeast Florida city of Palm Coast. The medical examiner ruled the 65-year-old woman had died of natural causes at least five days earlier. The woman's daughter, in her mid-30s, was inside the 24-hour store, where she had been shopping all night.
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