■ PHILIPPINES
Bombing suspect out on bail
An Egyptian teacher accused of plotting a Christmas bomb attack was freed on bail on Thursday, Filipino officials said. Sheikh Mohammed al-Sayyid Ahmed Mussa, described by Cairo as an envoy of Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, posted a 200,000 peso (US$4,800) bond and was released into the custody of the Egyptian embassy, a court clerk said. Mussa was arrested on Dec. 18 during a raid on an apartment in the Majad Islamic School where he was a visiting professor. He allegedly planned to detonate an explosive device that was seized in his room on Christmas Day.
■ PHILIPPINES
Arroyo fires prison chief
President Gloria Arroyo has sacked the Philippine prisons chief over the premature release of a politician serving 16 years for having sex with a child, officials said on Thursday. Philippine former House of Representatives member Romeo Jalosjos walked out of the national prison in Manila under unexplained circumstances on Saturday, after the justice department rejected a parole board recommendation for his early release. Bureau of Corrections chief Ricardo Dapat was sacked on Wednesday after Jalosjos was recaptured in the southern city of Dapitan. Jalosjos, a 67 year-old ally of Arroyo, was convicted in 1996 for having sex with an 11-year-old girl.
■ CHINA
Lottery winner drops out
A college student withdrew from school after winning the 5 million yuan (US$683,000) jackpot in a lottery in Nanjing, media reported on Thursday. The Jiangsu Maritime Institute sophomore, surnamed Yong, was the sole first-prize winner in the "Double Color Ball" issued by the China Welfare Lottery on Tuesday. "After winning the lottery, Yong told his roommates that he would share 2,000 yuan with each of them," a report said. Yong told school authorities of his winnings and returned home.
■ JAPAN
Prisoners dislike pajamas
Prisoners dislike their unstylish pajamas, a survey has found. In a poll of inmates who left prison in the year to March, almost 70 percent of respondents who shared cells with others said they had too little space, while 44 percent of those in solitary confinement said their cells were too small, the justice ministry said in a report issued on Wednesday. The former inmates also found their vertically striped grayish pajamas to be unfashionable. Close to half said the colors were bad and 44 percent said the design was ugly.
■ UNITED STATES
Alleged nose-wiper charged
A woman in Dunbar, West Virginia, was charged with battery on a police officer after the officer said she wiped her nose on the back of his shirt. Officer S.E. Elliott said he had arrested the 36-year-old woman last week after seeing her slap a man, bite him on the elbow and spit in his face. Elliott said the woman wiped her nose on him as he led her into the police station for booking on a charge of domestic battery. Battery on a police officer is defined as intentionally making physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with an officer.
■ UNITED STATES
Cougars freed from zoo
Two cougars freed from a zoo by vandals were captured without injuring anyone, the mayor of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, said. Vandals cut a chain-link fence overnight at the Lincoln Park Zoo to free the two animals. Both were found on Thursday inside the zoo's outside fence, tranquilized and returned to their cages. Mayor Kevin Crawford said he did not know whether the vandals were influenced by a Tuesday incident at the San Francisco Zoo in which a tiger escaped from its enclosure, killed one person and critically injured two others. Police are seeking the vandals, he said.
■ UNITED STATES
Chihuahua finds fugitive
A 135g Chihuahua mix named Tink helped police put a fugitive in the clink. The dog's Christmas Day adventure began when four suspects who were fleeing police crashed a stolen minivan into a hillside east of Sacramento, California, and one of them fled. Tink, a Pomeranian and Chihuahua mix, found him hiding under a neighbor's motor home and chased him into the woods, Wendy Anderson said. The dog belongs to her son. Her son and husband directed a law enforcement helicopter to where the 20-year-old man was hiding. "The Chihuahua gave him up," California Highway Patrol officer Jeff Herbert said.
■ UNITED STATES
No Web for sex offenders
Convicted sex offenders who used the Internet to help them commit their crimes will be banned from using the Internet in New Jersey under a measure signed into law on Thursday. The bill applies to people who, for example, lured a potential victim through e-mail or other electronic messages. It also affects paroled sex offenders under lifetime supervision, but exempts computer work done as part of a job or search for employment. "We live in scary times," said Acting Governor Richard Codey, who signed the bill because Governor Jon Corzine is vacationing. No federal law restricts sex offenders' Internet use.
■ RUSSIA
Government bans Santa ad
The government has ridden to the rescue of children by banning a television ad that declares Father Christmas does not exist, the daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta announced on Thursday. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service ruled that the ad run by a network of electronics stores called Eto breaks a law against discrediting parents, the government-run newspaper said. The ad says bluntly "that Father Frost does not exist," according to the report. "It means that parents are not telling the truth to children when they say Father Frost exists. In that way the ad induces negative relations between children and their parents," the service's deputy director, Andrei Kashevarov, was quoted as saying.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion