CHICAGO (AFP) – Disgraced media mogul Conrad Black was granted bail by a US court as he appeals a six-and-a-half year jail term imposed after being convicted of defrauding shareholders.

“Appellant Conrad M. Black is granted bail pending the disposition of his appeal in this court,” the court order said.

It added the terms of Black’s release would be set by the district court in Chicago which has been hearing his case, and it was not immediately clear when Black would be freed after being behind bars for the past two years.

Bail was granted after a US Supreme Court ruling last month opened the way for Black to challenge his July 2007 conviction for multi-million-dollar fraud.

His lawyer, Miguel Estrada, told AFP he could not immediately answer questions on the next step for Black as he was preparing legal documents.

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JUNEAU, Alaska – An official with the Tea Party Express on Monday blasted its expulsion from a national coalition over its refusal to oust a former chairman who satirized the NAACP in a controversial blog posting.

The political action committee that raises money for Republican candidates was booted from the National Tea Party Federation for refusing to rebuke spokesman Mark Williams, whose posting referred to NAACP president Benjamin Jealous as “Tom’s nephew and NAACP head colored person.”

Tea Party Express coordinator Joe Wierzbicki said it was “arrogant and preposterous” for the federation to expel his group.

“Circular firing squads of groups within the tea party movement attacking one another accomplish nothing, and on this issue the Tea Party Federation is wrong,” he said in a statement.

The friction highlights fault lines within the loosely jointed tea party movement, which has no central organization or bylaws. Internal squabbling could weaken its political clout, and it comes at a time when the NAACP and other have sought to discredit the movement.

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Sure, a fresh wave of obituaries was to be expected in the wake of a string of contretemps that jolted even the most jaded observers of our scandal-saturated mediasphere.

At the end of a week that saw a new low in the never-ending tailspin that is the life of Lindsay Lohan, Gibson’s misdeeds seem to have dug him a level of hell so low that there’s no coming back.

But even as battered and broken as his exquisitely tortured Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” Gibson will rise again.

In an industry where the newly freed Roman Polanski has his share of prominent, vocal supporters and in a country that loves nothing more than restoring public figures to the pedestals from which they fell, count on a Gibson comeback.

It’s not going to happen anytime soon, of course. That would be unseemly in the state of high dudgeon Hollywood currently finds itself. William Morris Endeavor Entertainment’s decision to drop Gibson as a client ensures no one will touch him with a 10-foot pole, as one studio chief put it.

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PALO ALTO, Calif. – Todd Atwood says he doesn’t worry too much about accidents when walking down the street using his iPhone to make calls, send text messages or check his e-mail.

But he’s seen the consequences of paying more attention to the gadget than what’s ahead.

“I saw someone walk right into a sign,” recalled the 32-year-old Silicon Valley resident. “She didn’t hurt herself but she was startled. She dropped her phone, then her friends starting laughing at her. It was funny but I guess it could’ve been more serious.”

While using a cell phone while driving has triggered the most alarm bells and prompted laws in several states, experts say, pedestrians are also suffering the consequences of mobile distraction — tripping on curbs, walking into traffic, even stepping into manholes as they chat or type while walking.

To help these sidewalk stumblers step out more safely, technology companies are now stepping in, creating applications that do everything from make a smartphone screen transparent to transform speech into text.

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BEIJING (Reuters) –
A geologist accused of stealing state secrets after he brokered the sale of an oil database has been sentenced to eight years in jail, the U.S. embassy said on Monday, over two-and-one-half years after he was detained.

Geologist Xue Feng, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen born in China, was detained late in 2007 after negotiating the sale of an oil industry database to his employer at the time, Colorado-based consultancy IHS Energy, now known as IHS Inc.

Xue was convicted of attempting to obtain and traffic in state secrets, a year after his trial ended, said the Duihua Foundation, which advocates for prisoners’ rights in China and the United States. The database was classified as a state secret only after it was sold, it added.

“We are dismayed by Dr. Xue’s eight-year sentence and 200,000 yuan ($29,540) fine. We remain concerned about his rights to due process under Chinese law,” U.S. embassy spokesman Richard Buangan said in an email. China’s notoriously vague state secrets laws received international attention last year, when Australian citizen Stern Hu and three colleagues working for mining giant Rio Tinto were detained for stealing state secrets during the course of tense iron ore negotiations.

The four were later convicted of the lesser charges of receiving kickbacks and stealing commercial secrets. The verdict of at least two senior Chinese steel officials accused of leaking the secrets has never been revealed, more than three months after they were convicted in a closed trial by a Shanghai court.

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