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sacking three others in the past year alone.
• His willingness to do so raises questions about whether he would take the same measures against bishops who covered up for sexually abusive priests. So far he has not.
• In the most notable case to date, Benedict fired Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba, Australia, last year after he called for the church to consider ordaining women and married men. He also removed a Congolese bishop for management problems in his diocese and an Italian one in May for similar reasons.
• On Monday, the Vatican said Benedict had "relieved from pastoral care" Bishop Robert Bezak of Trnava, Slovakia. No reason was given, but Italian news reports suggested administrative problems were to blame, and Slovak news reports quoted Bezak as saying he thought his criticism of his predecessor may have had a role.
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Report: Syrian president says he regrets downing of Turkish jet
• BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian President Bashar Assad said he regrets the shooting down of a Turkish jet by his forces, and he will not allow tensions between the two neighbors to deteriorate into an "armed conflict," a Turkish newspaper reported Tuesday.
• Syria downed the RF-4E warplane on June 22, after according to Syria it flew very low inside its airspace. Turkey says the jet was hit in international airspace after it briefly strayed into Syria.
• Assad offered no apology for the downing of the plane during an interview with Cumhuriyet on Sunday, insisting that it was shot down over Syria, and his forces acted in self-defense.
• He said that the plane was flying in a corridor inside Syrian airspace that had been used by Israeli planes in 2007, when they bombed a building under construction in northern Syria. The UN nuclear agency has said that the building was a nearly finished reactor meant to produce plutonium, which can be used to arm nuclear warheads
• "The plane was using the same corridor used by Israeli planes three times in the past," Assad told Cumhuriyet. "Soldiers shot it down because we did not see it on our radars and we were not informed about it."
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