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World News Quick Take

■ PHILIPPINES

Bombing suspect out on bail

An Egyptian teacher accused of plotting a Christmas bomb attack was freed on bail on Thursday, Filipino officials said. Sheikh Mohammed al-Sayyid Ahmed Mussa, described by Cairo as an envoy of Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, posted a 200,000 peso (US$4,800) bond and was released into the custody of the Egyptian embassy, a court clerk said. Mussa was arrested on Dec. 18 during a raid on an apartment in the Majad Islamic School where he was a visiting professor. He allegedly planned to detonate an explosive device that was seized in his room on Christmas Day.



■ PHILIPPINES

Arroyo fires prison chief

President Gloria Arroyo has sacked the Philippine prisons chief over the premature release of a politician serving 16 years for having sex with a child, officials said on Thursday. Philippine former House of Representatives member Romeo Jalosjos walked out of the national prison in Manila under unexplained circumstances on Saturday, after the justice department rejected a parole board recommendation for his early release. Bureau of Corrections chief Ricardo Dapat was sacked on Wednesday after Jalosjos was recaptured in the southern city of Dapitan. Jalosjos, a 67 year-old ally of Arroyo, was convicted in 1996 for having sex with an 11-year-old girl.



■ CHINA

Lottery winner drops out

A college student withdrew from school after winning the 5 million yuan (US$683,000) jackpot in a lottery in Nanjing, media reported on Thursday. The Jiangsu Maritime Institute sophomore, surnamed Yong, was the sole first-prize winner in the "Double Color Ball" issued by the China Welfare Lottery on Tuesday. "After winning the lottery, Yong told his roommates that he would share 2,000 yuan with each of them," a report said. Yong told school authorities of his winnings and returned home.



■ JAPAN

Prisoners dislike pajamas

Prisoners dislike their unstylish pajamas, a survey has found. In a poll of inmates who left prison in the year to March, almost 70 percent of respondents who shared cells with others said they had too little space, while 44 percent of those in solitary confinement said their cells were too small, the justice ministry said in a report issued on Wednesday. The former inmates also found their vertically striped grayish pajamas to be unfashionable. Close to half said the colors were bad and 44 percent said the design was ugly.



■ UNITED STATES

Alleged nose-wiper charged

A woman in Dunbar, West Virginia, was charged with battery on a police officer after the officer said she wiped her nose on the back of his shirt. Officer S.E. Elliott said he had arrested the 36-year-old woman last week after seeing her slap a man, bite him on the elbow and spit in his face. Elliott said the woman wiped her nose on him as he led her into the police station for booking on a charge of domestic battery. Battery on a police officer is defined as intentionally making physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with an officer.



■ UNITED STATES

Cougars freed from zoo

Two cougars freed from a zoo by vandals were captured without injuring anyone, the mayor of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, said. Vandals cut a chain-link fence overnight at the Lincoln Park Zoo to free the two animals. Both were found on Thursday inside the zoo's outside fence, tranquilized and returned to their cages. Mayor Kevin Crawford said he did not know whether the vandals were influenced by a Tuesday incident at the San Francisco Zoo in which a tiger escaped from its enclosure, killed one person and critically injured two others. Police are seeking the vandals, he said.



■ UNITED STATES

Chihuahua finds fugitive

A 135g Chihuahua mix named Tink helped police put a fugitive in the clink. The dog's Christmas Day adventure began when four suspects who were fleeing police crashed a stolen minivan into a hillside east of Sacramento, California, and one of them fled. Tink, a Pomeranian and Chihuahua mix, found him hiding under a neighbor's motor home and chased him into the woods, Wendy Anderson said. The dog belongs to her son. Her son and husband directed a law enforcement helicopter to where the 20-year-old man was hiding. "The Chihuahua gave him up," California Highway Patrol officer Jeff Herbert said.



■ UNITED STATES

No Web for sex offenders

Convicted sex offenders who used the Internet to help them commit their crimes will be banned from using the Internet in New Jersey under a measure signed into law on Thursday. The bill applies to people who, for example, lured a potential victim through e-mail or other electronic messages. It also affects paroled sex offenders under lifetime supervision, but exempts computer work done as part of a job or search for employment. "We live in scary times," said Acting Governor Richard Codey, who signed the bill because Governor Jon Corzine is vacationing. No federal law restricts sex offenders' Internet use.



■ RUSSIA

Government bans Santa ad

The government has ridden to the rescue of children by banning a television ad that declares Father Christmas does not exist, the daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta announced on Thursday. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service ruled that the ad run by a network of electronics stores called Eto breaks a law against discrediting parents, the government-run newspaper said. The ad says bluntly "that Father Frost does not exist," according to the report. "It means that parents are not telling the truth to children when they say Father Frost exists. In that way the ad induces negative relations between children and their parents," the service's deputy director, Andrei Kashevarov, was quoted as saying.
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