■ Colombia
Guerrillas free bishop
Marxist guerrillas freed a Roman Catholic bishop unharmed three days after he was abducted in an effort to use him to deliver a political message to authorities, officials said. But Bishop Misael Vacca Ramirez said on Tuesday he was never given a message because an army rescue operation cut his captors off from their commanders, who had prepared the statement. Vacca Ramirez, the bishop of Yopal, was released close to where he was taken hostage on Saturday in remote northeastern mountains. "I was treated well. At no moment did anybody show me disrespect," Vacca Ramirez, 48, told reporters.
■ Iran
Polygamist jailed
Former culture minister Attaollah Mohajerani has been arrested and jailed for not registering polygamy, the daily Etemad reported yesterday. While already married, Mohajerani had reportedly started an affair with another woman named Mahsa Yussefi, and even promised her marriage -- legal under Islamic laws if approved by the first wife. The report, initially carried by the conservative news service Fars, had yet to be confirmed by other sources. His official wife, Jamileh Kadivar, a former reformist member of parliament and an advocate of women's rights, has so far denied all allegations against her husband and branded them as a dirty campaign by his conservative opponents to block his political career.
■ United Kingdom
Channel fined for porn
British media regulators on Tuesday fined a porno-graphic satellite television channel ?50,000 (US$92,080) for broadcasting graphic sex too early in the evening. Digital Television Production aired the sexually explicit images of simulated intercourse and orgasm between 8:30pm and 10pm on April 8 on its XplicitXXX service on a free-to-air basis to promote the normally encrypted channel.
■ Netherlands
Charity sued for ransom debt
The Dutch government is suing aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) for repayment of a ransom the Netherlands paid for the release of one of the medical group's workers kidnapped in Russia, it said on Tuesday. The Dutch last month threatened to take legal action after the medical charity failed to repay a ransom reported to be around 1 million euros (US$1.2 million) paid to Russian kidnappers to free Dutch aid worker Arjan Erkel after 20 months. The Netherlands asked for the cash back in May, admitting that it had paid a ransom and angering MSF, one of the most active foreign organizations in the Caucasus.
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