World in brief: Teacher charged in teddy bear case

Sudan charged a British teacher Wednesday with inciting religious hatred – a crime punishable by 40 lashes – because she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad as part of a class project.

The country’s top Muslim clerics pressed the government to ensure that the teacher, Gillian Gibbons, is punished, comparing her action to author Salman Rushdie’s “blasphemies” against the Prophet Muhammad.

The charges against Gibbons angered the British government, which urgently summoned the Sudanese ambassador to discuss the case. British and American Muslim groups also criticized the decision.

Gibbons, 54, was arrested at her home in Khartoum on Sunday after some parents of her students accused her of naming the bear after Islam’s prophet. Muhammad is a common name among Muslim men, but the parents saw applying it to a toy animal as an insult.

Washington

U.S. protests China’s ship snub

Tensions between the United States and China rose Wednesday as the Pentagon lodged a formal protest over Beijing’s refusal to permit American naval vessels access to Hong Kong and President Bush questioned the visiting Chinese foreign minister about last week’s snub.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, told Bush the issue was a “misunderstanding.”

Some experts on Sino-American military relations saw the matter as an outgrowth of discomfort among hard-liners in China with the Bush administration’s open-armed welcome last month of the Dalai Lama, the leader of the exiled Tibetan government.

Bratislava, Slovakia

Radioactive material seized

Police in Slovakia and Hungary arrested three people and seized 2.2 pounds of an unspecified but “dangerous” radioactive material the suspects were trying to sell for $1 million, Slovak authorities said Wednesday.

The Czech news agency CTK, citing unconfirmed reports, said the material seized by authorities was enriched uranium. Slovak police spokesman Martin Korch declined to comment on the report, saying specialists were examining what he described only as “dangerous radioactive material.”

Two of the suspects were arrested in eastern Slovakia, and the third was arrested in Hungary, Korch said. The suspects were not identified.

Stockholm, Sweden

Nobel winner can’t travel to ceremony

Doris Lessing is unable to travel to Stockholm to receive her Nobel Prize in literature on Dec. 10 due to back problems, the Nobel Foundation said Wednesday.

Instead, the $1.5 million prize will be presented to the 87-year-old British writer in London, it said.

“Unfortunately her medical advisers have said she must not travel,” the foundation said.