Virginia

Plane diverts after passenger demands to go to Australia

An American Airlines commuter flight was diverted Saturday after a passenger passed a note to the crew demanding to be taken to Australia, the FBI said. The plane landed safely at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, and the passenger was in FBI custody.

The FBI said there was no indication that the incident involving Flight 4959, operated by American Eagle and carrying 19 passengers and a crew of five, was terrorism-related.

The passenger, whose identity was not released, was being questioned by the FBI. No charges were immediately filed.

New York’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly, said a passenger passed a note to a crew member during the flight claiming that he had a bomb. The passenger later said he had a grenade, Kelly said.

Iraq

British soldiers, Iraqi police clash with protesters

British soldiers and Iraqi police clashed Saturday with armed, stone-throwing protesters in southeastern Iraq, killing six people. At least one was killed as he tried to throw a grenade at soldiers, the British military said.

In Baghdad, a senior U.S. military officer acknowledged for the first time that a U.S. Army medevac helicopter that crashed last week near Fallujah, killing all nine soldiers aboard, was probably shot down.

And north of the capital, the U.S. military said it was investigating allegations that soldiers killed four Iraqi civilians who tried to pass a convoy this month in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Beijing

WHO investigators scour apartments in SARS probe

Tracking the origins of China’s latest confirmed SARS case, international medical investigators scoured a southern Chinese apartment block in an effort to determine if anything there played a role in the infection.

The World Health Organization said Sunday it had no immediate information on a report in one Hong Kong newspaper saying a third suspected case of severe acute respiratory syndrome was being treated in the southern province of Guangdong.

At the same time, experts worked Sunday to process laboratory samples taken from a restaurant that employed a woman who has become another suspected case. They said they found no immediate conclusions about whether her job was linked to her illness.

Boston

Temperatures drop to record lows across Northeast U.S.

Temperatures dropped well below zero Saturday across the Northeast, making it the coldest day in a decade for some cities and keeping all but the hardiest people indoors.

St. Johnsbury, Vt., led the list of records Saturday with a low of 27 below zero, the National Weather Service said.

Boston’s Logan International Airport recorded a low of 3 below zero, two degrees chillier than the previous record for Jan. 10, set in 1875. It was the city’s coldest day since Jan. 16, 1994, when thermometers registered 4 below.