■ United KingdomRadical cleric `de-arrested'
A radical Muslim cleric who was arrested last week on suspicion of being involved in terrorist offenses has been "de-arrested," police said yesterday. Abu Hamza al-Masri was arrested last Thursday at Belmarsh Prison in southeast London where he was already was being held on a US arrest warrant for terrorism charges. Metropolitan Police said he had been returned to that prison following questioning at a London police station and his subsequent de-arrest. The British action had threatened to delay US attempts to extradite Al-Masri, 47, on 11 charges relating to terrorism, including allegedly trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon.
■ United Kingdom
Thatcher to post son's bail
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher has agreed to post bail of ?350,000 (US$628,747) to free her son Mark from house arrest in South Africa, the Times newspaper reported yesterday. Sir Mark Thatcher, a 51-year-old businessman, was arrested in Cape Town a week ago on suspicion of helping to finance an alleged coup bid in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. He denies the allegation. The Times said Baroness Thatcher, 78, had agreed to help her son after a phone conversation on her return to Britain from a holiday in the US on Aug. 27.
■ Senegal
Troops to fight locusts
The leaders of twelve West African countries have agreed to use their armed forces to fight locusts which have wreaked havoc in the region during recent weeks, news reports said yesterday. After talks late Tuesday in the Senegalese capital Dakar, ministers agreed to coordinate crop-spraying operations from five bases in Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad, the BBC reported. Senegal's President Abdolaye Wade said that only the mobilization of military forces could stop the locust infestation from spreading further. The infestations of the desert locust are the most widespread and damaging in 15 years.
■ Sweden
Ticket no good for thief
The old saying that crime doesn't pay seems especially true for a teenager who allegedly stole a lottery ticket but was forced to hand it over after discovering it contained the jackpot win. The 15-year-old boy shoplifted the ticket from a grocery store outside the northeastern Swedish town of Oernskoeldsvik last week, local media reported Tuesday. When he went home and scratched the ticket, he discovered it contained a winning combin-ation worth up to 7.5 million kronor (US$1 million). Store manager Patrik Nygren, however, recognized the teenager on surveillance tapes, and went to the boy's house to reclaim it. Nygren then handed the winning ticket to police and reported the theft.
■ United Kingdom
DNA test awaits spitters
Been spit on? Get even. British bus drivers will wipe away the insult of feeling a stranger's spittle running down their cheek with new DNA tests that can help track down the offender, police said yesterday. With "Operation Gobstopper," London drivers will receive 2,500 special kits of sterile swabs, gloves and an evidence bag to preserve the spittle of angry or abusive passengers, they said. Police and transport chiefs believe spitting attacks on drivers are much more common than records show, since the crime is considered both humiliating and almost impossible to punish.
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