WORLD: BRIEFLY

Large part of MiG-29 fleet found unsafe

A large part of Russia’s fighter jet fleet has been found unsafe during inspections made after a MiG-29 plane lost part of its tail on a training flight, the air force said Friday. The air force grounded the entire MiG-29 fleet after the Dec. 5 crash in Siberia, where another of the jets crashed in October. A check of the planes’ condition began as a military panel investigated the cause of the December crash. Air force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik said that about 90 MiG-29s had been found unsafe to fly and would need repairs. More than 100 of the planes have been cleared for flights, and a number of others remain to be checked, he said.

American protester critically hurt

An American demonstrator was critically wounded in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel’s West Bank separation barrier. Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif., area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt. The protest took place in the West Bank town of Naalin, where Palestinians and international backers frequently gather to demonstrate against the barrier.

Aid workers taken in Darfur freed

Three foreign workers for Doctors Without Borders staff members were freed two days after they were abducted in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, said the Italian Foreign Ministry. An official from the aid organization’s Brussels branch where the three worked, Erwin Van’t Land, also said the group had been told by the kidnappers and by the Sudanese authorities that the three had been released.

They include a Canadian nurse, Italian doctor and French coordinator of the group also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF. There was no immediate word on whether a ransom had been paid.

Suspects released in Dutch bomb plot

Dutch police released all seven people arrested after an anonymous warning of a plot to plant bombs in an Amsterdam shopping district, prosecutors said Friday, easing fears that the Dutch capital was the target of a terrorist threat by Moroccan immigrants. Police had offered no evidence to give credibility to the bomb threat, which coincided with the fifth anniversary of the deadly Madrid train bombings. But the public prosecutors office defended the police response, which included closing a major entertainment and shopping district Thursday and arresting the suspects, all originally described as Dutch-Moroccans. The prosecutor later said at least two held only Moroccan nationality.

Oil spill sullies Australia beach

Authorities declared a disaster zone along a stretch of some of Australia’s most pristine and popular beaches after tons of fuel oil that leaked from a stricken cargo ship blackened the creamy white sand for miles. The government of northeastern Queensland state denied it had acted too slowly to stop an environmental disaster, and threatened the shipping company with a multimillion-dollar compensation lawsuit.

Both sides mourn IRA victim

Thousands of Protestants and Catholics united with their political and security leaders at the funeral of a policeman —- shot by IRA dissidents in what mourners prayed would mark the end of Northern Ireland’s “troubles.” Constable Stephen Carroll, 48, was shot Monday as he sat in his patrol car. He was the first policeman killed in the country since 1998, the year of the Good Friday peace accord. Just two days earlier, dissidents gunned down two unarmed soldiers, the first killing of British troops since 1997. Among more than 500 mourners inside the church in Bainbridge on Friday were politicians from Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that had never attended a police funeral before.