Amman - The Jordanian authorities on Wednesday freed four prisoners who were transferred last year from Israel to spend the remainder of their jail term at Jordanian prisons, an official statement said.

The four Jordanians - Sultan Ajlouni, Salem Abu Ghalyoun, Khalid Abu Ghalyoun and Amin al-Sane - were released after ending three quarters of their remaining jail term at Jordanian jails, the spokesman for the Public Security Department Major Mohammad Khatib said.

Amman - The Danish cartoonist who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed three years ago which sparked worldwide protests by Muslims and a boycott of Danish products said he was ready to defend himself in an Amman court, Jordanian media reported Thursday.

"I would like to go to Amman to stand trial. However, what I fear is that I would be convicted in advance," Kurt Westergaard told the Jordan Times in an interview that was conducted in Copenhagen earlier this week.

On June 3, Amman Prosecutor Hassan Abdullat subpoenaed Westergaard and 20 other Danish journalists and editors involved in the republication of the 12 controversial images that were originally published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September 2005.

Amman  - The Iraqi government has agreed to raise the discount offered to Jordan on crude oil from Kirkuk to 22 dollars per barrel, Energy Minister Khaldoun Qteishat said Tuesday.

Under a deal signed between the two countries two years ago, Iraq agreed to sell Jordan crude oil at a preferential price of 18 dollars lower than the world market price.

Iraqi oil supplies to Jordan were high on the agenda of King Abdullah II's whirlwind visit to Baghdad on Monday, when he became the first Arab head of state to visit Iraq since the downfall of the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein five years ago.

Amman - Jordan's income from tourism rose by 8.5 per cent while the number of visitors coming to the country on package tours increased by 55 per cent in the first six months of the year, according to official statistics published Thursday.

The kingdom's tourism industry generated revenues of 835 million dinars (1.18 billion dollars) between January and June, compared with 769 million dinars in the same period of 2007, a report by the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) said.

The number of visitors on package tours increased to 242,795 in the first half of the year from 156,358 in the same period of 2007.

Amman - A new generation of portable Russian grenade launchers that can fire multi-sized rounds and punch through tank armour will be built in Jordan starting next year, a senior official was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

The project will be carried out by a joint Jordanian-Russian company that was established last year, Muayyad Samman, Chairman and CEO of King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau (KADDB) was quoted as saying by the Jordan Times.

"The factory will be a strategic project that seeks to transfer the technology to Jordan, provide the Jordan Armed Forces with its needs of this weapon, export to other markets, create jobs and bring hard currency into the Kingdom," Samman said.

Amman  - Jordan's lower house of parliament on Thursday rejected as of "political nature" the genocide charges issued recently by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

"The house rejects these charges because we are convinced that they are of political nature and seek to fulfil objectives and interests of certain states," said the chamber's Speaker, Abdul Hadi Majali.