Pope fractures wrist

AOSTA: A hospital spokesman says Pope Benedict XVI is undergoing surgery after breaking his right wrist in a fall during his vacation in the Italian Alps. Tiziano Trevisan, a spokesman at the Umberto Parini hospital in Aosta, says surgeons were operating on Friday on the wrist to reduce the fracture, a procedure to realign the broken bone fragments. He said they were giving 82-year-old Benedict “light sedation,” though heavier anesthesia may be given as the surgery progresses. — AP

Muslim convert jailed

LONDON: A British Muslim convert was jailed on Friday for plotting to carry out a suicide bomb attack on a shopping mall in southern England. Isa Ibrahim, a 20-year-old doctor’s son who was educated at some of Britain’s most exclusive private schools, was convicted of planning to kill himself and scores of innocent shoppers. Judge Neil Butterfield said Ibrahim would be jailed for a minimum of 10 years. “You are a dangerous young man, well capable of acting on the views you held in the spring of 2008,” when he was arrested, the judge said. — AP

Passenger drives train

NEW YORK: A witness has told police that a Long Island Rail Road engineer let a passenger operate a train bound for New York City. MTA Police Chief Michael Coan says the train ran smoothly and no one was injured. The witness told police that he saw a passenger in the cab without the engineer during part of the morning run on July 2, according to Newsday newspaper. The double-decker train was moving from Port Jefferson and normally carried about 400 passengers at a speed of up to 128 kph. — AP

Four killed in mishap

DHAKA: A speeding passenger train rammed into a bus packed with members of a bridal party on Friday in southwestern Bangladesh, killing four people, including three children.

Ten others were injured in the accident at an unmanned railway crossing in Jessore district, 136 kilometers west of Dhaka. The children, aged three to seven, died instantly while the driver of the bus was another victim, the report said. — AP