NEW YORK

Prosecutor: Spy suspects a flight risk if freed on bail

A prosecutor says 11 people accused of operating as Russian spies have lots of helpers in the U.S. waiting to aid their flight if they are released on bail.

The prosecutor, Michael Farbiarz, told a New York federal magistrate judge on Thursday that there are a lot of Russian officials in the United States who are actively assisting the conspiracy.

He says the defendants would have a “powerful sophisticated network they can call upon in the United States” if they were freed on bail.

LAHORE, Pakistan

Suicide bombers attack Muslim shrine, killing 35

Two suicide bombers struck a popular Muslim shrine in Pakistan’s second largest city late Thursday night, killing 35 people and wounding 175 others in the second major attack in Lahore in a month, the city’s top official said.

The bombers struck as thousands of people were visiting the Data Darbar shrine, where a famous Sufi saint is buried. Muslims in Pakistan visit shrines and mosques in large numbers on Thursday and Friday nights.

Lahore has experienced a growing number of attacks as Taliban fighters along the northwest border with Afghanistan have teamed up with militant groups in the country’s heartland once supported by the government.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. But Islamist extremists consider Sufis to be heretics and have often targeted them, as well as Shiites and other minority groups.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.

Settlement of $20 million going to kidnapped family

California lawmakers approved a $20 million settlement Thursday with the family of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped as a girl and held captive in a secret backyard for 18 years by a paroled sex offender.

Dugard, 30, resurfaced last August with two daughters she bore with Phillip Garrido, a convicted rapist.

Dugard and her daughters, ages 15 and 12, filed claims in February, saying state officials with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation failed to do their jobs. Parole agents began supervising Garrido in 1999 but didn’t discover Dugard.

WASHINGTON

Eccentric math genius turns down $1 million contest prize

Who would refuse a $1 million prize for solving a math problem?

A very smart man, apparently.

Three months ago, famously impoverished Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman was awarded the $1 million Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Prize for his groundbreaking work — having solved a problem of three-dimensional geometry that had resisted scores of brilliant mathematicians since 1904.

Thursday, the institute announced that Perelman, known equally for his brilliance and his eccentricities, finally and formally turned down the award. He didn’t deserve it, he told a Russian news service, because he was following a mathematical path set by another.