■ 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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