WILD CARD: Inconsistent information about a cellphone SIM card may foul the case against Mohammed Haneef, who is charged with supporting a terrorist organization
Prosecutors may have given an Australian court wrong information about a suspect's links to the failed terrorist attacks in Britain, and badly damaged their chances of a conviction, laywers said yesterday.

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An Italian priest kidnapped by Islamic militants broke down in tears yesterday as he described his six weeks of captivity in the Philippine jungle.

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India's outgoing President Abdul Kalam says he will leave the sprawling presidential palace where he has lived for the past five years with just "two small suitcases."

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Taliban gunmen halted a bus and kidnapped 18 South Korean passengers, including 15 women, as it was traveling a highway to Afghanistan's capital, the hardline Islamic militia said yesterday.

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HOT CROSS BUNS: A report about breakfast pork buns containing cardboard soaked in caustic soda has led to reprimands, demerits and firings for those involved
At least seven more people have been fired or reprimanded over an allegedly fake television report about street vendors selling buns stuffed with chemically treated cardboard, Chinese state media reported yesterday.

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MAGICAL PARTIES: Bookstores around the world have organized celebrations to help eager readers survive the last few hours before `Deathly Hallows' is released
Thousands of would-be sorcerers and ordinary, non-magical Muggles lined up outside bookstores from Sydney to Seattle yesterday, eager to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final volume in the boy wizard's saga.

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CASH FOR LORDS: A prosecutor said there was not enough evidence to indict anyone suspected of offering seats in the House of Lords in exchange for political party funding
Associates of former British prime minister Tony Blair who were arrested during a lengthy police investigation of political funding will not face charges, the Crown Prosecution Service said yesterday.

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Seven British Cabinet ministers have reportedly confessed they smoked cannabis at university, as one after another cleared the air on their student past in an extraordinary procession on Thursday.

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SIERRA LEONE WAR: Two men were given 50 years and a third received 45 years after being found guilty of mutilation, rape, murder and other charges
The UN-backed war crimes court for Sierra Leone on Thursday handed out lengthy jail terms to three rebel militia commanders found guilty of murder, rape and enlisting child soldiers during the country's 10-year civil war.

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Two Iranian-Americans accused of conspiring against the government were shown on state-run TV for a second time with montages of separate quotes combined to form what could be interpreted as incriminating statements.

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MAIN CARTEL: Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante, whose cartel is believed to account for 60 percent of cocaine sold in the US, said he smuggled tonnes of cocaine each night
Colombia has extradited a reputed drug kingpin who acknowledged smuggling planeloads of cocaine into the US and said he would be relieved to enter a US jail after receiving death threats from rival traffickers.

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Former CIA operative Valerie Plame has lost a lawsuit that demanded money from US Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials whom she believes leaked her secret agency identity.

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One of the two reverse thrusters on an airliner carrying 186 people that crashed in a fireball was turned off when the plane landed, the jet's owner said, as officials tried to determine why it raced down a runway instead of slowing down.

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An employee at a US nuclear research laboratory was arrested on Thursday for taking secret uranium enrichment equipment, the Justice Department announced.

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Senator Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, the wife of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner, on Thursday launched a campaign for her husband's job, with ambitious promises to reform Argentina.

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SOLVED: The computer program Chinook cannot be beaten at checkers, the group says, because it has figured out the trillions of possible ends to the game
Canadian researchers report they have solved checkers, developing a program called Chinook that cannot lose in a game popular with young and old alike for more than 1,000 years.

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