■ LIBYA
Bush warned off case
Libya urged US President George W. Bush on Monday to stay out of the case of six foreign medics sentenced to death for infecting Libyan children with HIV and allow Tripoli to reach a solution with the EU. "We hope that Bush and others will leave us to continue negotiations with the concerned parties so as to find a solution to this crisis," Abdelati Labidi, Libya's junior foreign minister, told reporters. Bush, ending a European tour in Bulgaria, said securing the release of five Bulgarian nurses was a high priority for the US. Bush spoke on Monday after EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier held talks in Libya.
■ UNITED STATES
Court orders teen's release
A Georgia court ordered the release on Monday of a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a girl when the two were teenagers. Georgia's attorney general said he would appeal. Genarlow Wilson, now 21, was sent to prison in 2005 for aggravated child molestation, then a felony with a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years and lifetime registration on the state's sexual offender list. A sports star and honor student, Wilson was 17 when he was videotaped at a 2003 New Year's Eve party having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. Georgia legislators changed the law last year to make oral sex among teens a misdemeanor.
■ UNITED STATES
Rooster `killer' may get off
A New York man who acknowledged biting the head off a rooster after a neighbor spotted the animal's headless torso outside the apartment accepted a prosecution offer on Monday that could lead to the case against him being dismissed. Humberto Rodriguez was arrested on June 29 last year and charged with animal cruelty after the neighbor called the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Rodriguez said he killed the bird because the rooster had injured his pet pigeon, an ASPCA official said. The deal that Rodriguez accepted means he does not have to enter a guilty or not guilty plea, and his case will be dismissed if he is not arrested within the next six months.
■ UNITED STATES
Jail a wake-up call: Hilton
Paris Hilton believes her jail sentence was a message from God to change her party-loving lifestyle and become a positive role model for women who look up to her. In a phone call from the hospital facility of a prison in Los Angeles, Hilton told Barbara Walters on ABC TV's The View, on Monday: "I used to act dumb. It was an act ... and that act is no longer cute." Hilton has said she will not appeal the decision to send her back to prison to serve her 45-day term.
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