WORLD briefs

DUBLIN. Prime Minister Brian Cowen lost his parliamentary majority Thursday after two lawmakers said they would ignore their party's voting instructions in a protest against cuts to cancer services. The move left Cowen's already shaky coalition with just 82 guaranteed votes in the 166-seat parliament and raises the specter of an early election amid unprecedented economic crisis in Ireland.

BAGHDAD. A teenage Iraqi girl who claimed her husband's female relatives strapped explosives on her has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for attempting to blow herself up at a checkpoint in northeastern Iraq, a provincial judge said Thursday. Rania Ibrahim was sentenced Sunday in a juvenile court for the attempted attack on Iraqi security forces near Baqouba in August 2008, said Diyala provincial Judge Zaid Khalaf.

PARIS. President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Thursday that France would continue to support a "courageous" Sudanese woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers. Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, was charged with public indecency after she was arrested last month along with 12 other women who were wearing trousers at a Khartoum restaurant.

KUALA LUMPUR. Malaysia is considering imposing an Internet filter to block "undesirable" websites, on the grounds of maintaining racial harmony in the multicultural nation. The move was quickly condemned by the opposition which described it as a "horror of horrors" that would destroy the relative freedom of the Internet in Malaysia, where the mainstream press is tightly controlled. A senior official with the National Security Council (NSC) confirmed reports that the coalition government was considering imposing controls -- effectively scrapping a 1996 guarantee that it would not censor the Internet.

BEIJING. A dog is suspected to be the origin of an outbreak of pneumonic plague in northwest China that has killed three people and left 10,000 under strict quarantine, state media reported. Ziketan, a remote town in a Tibetan area of Qinghai province, has been locked down since Saturday in an effort to contain the spread of the highly virulent disease. One patient was in critical condition and eight others were infected.