The world in brief

— QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The failure to meet commitments puts the Afghan mission - and with it, the credibility of NATO - at real risk." Defense Secretary Robert Gates, addressing a conference in Europe Article, this page

Rome court drops GI's case in Iraq killing

ROME - A court on Thursday threw out the case of an American soldier charged in the 2005 shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq.

The court granted the defense's argument that Italy had no jurisdiction in the case against Spc. Mario Lozano, who was on trial in absentia on charges of murder and attempted murder.

Prosecutor Pietro Saviotti said he would decide whether to appeal the ruling after the judges make their reasoning public.

Lozano was on trial in the March 4, 2005, death of Nicola Calipari, who was shot at a checkpoint near Baghdad airport shortly after securing the release of a kidnapped Italian reporter. The journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, and an agent who was driving the car were wounded.

Lozano, 38, of the New York-based 69th Infantry Regiment, has always denied wrongdoing. He told U.S. media that he flashed a warning light signaling the vehicle to stop and that he shot first at the ground, and then at the car's engine.

Italy had not sought Lozano's extradition, but the Pentagon had indicated he would not have been extradited anyway, saying it considered the incident a "closed matter."Volcano erupts in central Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A volcano erupted in central Indonesia on Thursday, shooting plumes of white smoke and sand nearly 5,000 feet into the air and covering nearby villages in ash, officials said.

Residents living near the crater of Mount Soputan on Sulawesi Island were evacuated before the blast and there were no immediate reports of injuries or serious damage, said Sandy Manengke, a local monitoring official.

The heat could be felt as far as 12 miles away, he said, and some residents living in villages near the base of the 5,800-foot mountain wore face masks to protect themselves from the smoke and ash.

Abandoned homes along the volcano's fertile slopes were covered in soot, Manengke said.

Indonesia has more active volcanoes than any other nation because of its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" - a series of fault lines stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia.

Factory owners arrested after fatal fire

BEIJING - Police in southeastern China have arrested the owners of an unlicensed shoe factory where a fire killed 37 people, state media said Thursday.

The fire, which broke out Sunday in the city of Putian in Fujian province, was one of the deadliest industrial accidents this year in a country plagued with dangerous workplaces.

Nineteen people were also injured in the blaze.

Police in Putian arrested the factory's owners, Chen Zongfei and Huang Shubin, for failing to prevent the fire, the official Xinhua news agency reported. It said Qiu Jincai, an official in charge of work safety in the city, had been suspended.

A man who answered the phone at the Putian police office refused to comment, referring questions to the city's Communist Party office. No one answered calls to the party's media office.

Yemen frees key attacker of USS Cole

SANA, Yemen - Yemen has set free one of the al-Qaida masterminds of the USS Cole bombing in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors, a senior security official said Thursday.

Jamal al-Badawi, who is wanted by the FBI, was convicted in 2004 of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the USS Cole bombing and received a death sentence that was commuted to 15 years in prison.

He and 22 others, mostly al-Qaida fighters, escaped from prison in 2004. But al-Badawi was granted his freedom after turning himself in 15 days ago and pledging loyalty to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The official said police were told by the government to "stop all previous orders concerning measures adopted against al-Badawi."

Al-Qaida used to have an active presence in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden. The group was blamed for the bombing of the Cole and the attack two years later on a French oil tanker that killed one person.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/26/2007

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