IN A place as politically turbulent as Egypt, where yesterday’s good guys become today’s villains and vice versa, telling fact from fiction can be tricky. But clearly, many Egyptian newspapers make little effort to do so. 
 
 A spoof Arabic news website recently posted a story claiming that Swedish riot police have tested laughing gas to control crowds. The gas had proven astonishingly effective, it said, making dangerous rioting mobs fall haplessly to the floor with giggles. A quick check on Google would have shown this to be a hoax. Yet not only did half a dozen Cairo newspapers pick up the story and run it as fact, several embellished on it, or ascribed it to "wire reports" or "a Swedish news service". 
 
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 It is not just Egypt’s press that struggles with the truth. On New Years Day Vodafone, a mobile-phone operator, felt obliged to issue a statement denying that an advertisement it had produced, featuring Muppet-like dolls, carried any subversive messages. The denial followed allegations, aired on a television talk show, that the advert contained imagery and words suggesting that a coded message was being issued to Islamist terrorists. 
 
 Given an intensified campaign against the ousted Muslim Brotherhood by Egypt’s army-backed government, and given the loyalist Egyptian press’s fevered efforts to cheerlead the witch hunt, it was not surprising that many viewers took the allegations seriously. Some noted that a cactus that appeared briefly in the cheaply made three-minute clip had four branches, suspiciously similar to the four-fingered salute that became a symbol for Brotherhood supporters after hundreds were killed during police operations to clear a protest sit-in in Cairo. The cactus represented bitterness and resistance, asserted one commentator, while another remarked that a Christmas ornament hanging from the cactus suggested a bomb. 
 
 The clip was one of a series promoting services for clients, all featuring a garrulous mother, Abla Fahita, and her pop-eyed daughter Karkura. The questionable episode shows Abla Fahita chatting with a friend whom she calls Mama Tutu. This unseen character, claimed a self-proclaimed "expert" in secret codes who appeared on the chat show, clearly represented the Brotherhood. His conclusion was that the segment was a coded call for Brotherhood operatives to bomb churches on Christmas, which most Egyptian Christians celebrate on January 7th. 
 
 By and large, Egyptians have poured scorn and ridicule on all this silly talk. Not, however, the government. The country’s prosecutor general has formally tasked the state security prosecution service, a feared branch that handles terrorist cases, with carrying out an urgent and thorough investigation of Mama Fahita. 
 
 Not surprisingly, Egypt’s internet has exploded with farcical “support groups” for the floppy doll, complete with preemptive protests against her likely abuse and torture at the hands of Egypt’s overenthusiastic police. Posing as hyper-nationalists, rival posts have demanded a nationwide round-up of puppets and a manhunt for Mama Tutu. ||||| Police eyeing link to South Park in Times Square car bomb 
 
 Giancarli for News A car was found Saturday night in Times Square, which later proved to contain cans of flammable liquid and other explosive devices. 
 
 Police hunting the man who parked a crude but powerful car bomb in Times Square Saturday night are looking into a possible link to a South Park cartoon lampooning censorship about Mohammed. 
 
 No link has been established, but threats against the Comedy Central animators were made by a New York Islamist Web site last month and police are aggressively looking for connections, sources told the Daily News. 
 
 The dark-colored Nissan SUV, its engine running and hazard lights flashing, was parked on W. 45th St. right next to the Broadway headquarters of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central. 
 
 The Pathfinder was packed with propane, gasoline and fireworks and a rudimentary fuse had already been ignited. 
 
 A vendor saved the day when he saw smoke curling from the car at about 6:30 p.m. and alerted Officer Wayne Rhatigan. 
 
 The materials were primitive, but if the SUV had blown, officials said the inferno would have eclipsed the blazing lights of the Crossroads of the World. 
 
 "I think the intent was to cause a significant ball of fire," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. 
 
 "We are very, very lucky," said a police source. 
 
 Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the feds were taking it very seriously, treating it as "a potential terrorist attack." 
 
 "Right now, we have no information other than it is a one-off," she told ABC. 
 
 "Nonetheless, we are alerting state and local law enforcement - everybody - to be on their toes." 
 
 A Taliban official in Pakistan took credit in an audio tape posted to YouTube, but officials were hesitant to link the failed attack to international terrorist groups, calling it more likely a "one-off" or "lone wolf." 
 
 Preliminary signs suggest "that this was not part of any plot by al Qaeda or another known terrorist organization," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). 
 
 He said the feds picked up no overseas "chatter" before Saturday night's attempted attack. 
 
 CBS reported that Pakistani intelligence officials were discounting the Taliban claim, saying the group does not have the global reach of al Qaeda. 
 
 The same group claimed credit for last year's Binghamton massacre of 13 people carried out by laid-off Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong, who had no ties to militant Islam. 
 
 Last month, RevolutionMuslim.com posted a graphic photo of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker murdered in 2004 for making documentary on violence against Muslim women. 
 
 It warned animators Trey Parker and Matt Stone - who had just shown Mohammed hidden in a bear suit - that "they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show."
– Apparently there are places even South Park fears to tread. After getting a death threat from the jihadist website RevolutionMuslim.com, the show pulled the prophet Mohammed out of this week's episode, bleeping out all mention of his name, putting “censored” banners over parts of the episode and, where necessary, replacing him with Santa Claus in a bear suit, the Huffington Post reports. Here's the deal: last week's episode (which you can see a clip of here) mocked the taboo against showing the prophet Mohammed, having him show up first hidden inside a U-Haul, and then inside a bear costume. This week's episode was to continue that story. It's unclear whether the extra censorship is intended to appease the irony-challenged folks at RevolutionMuslim or mock them. South Park, incidentally, has tackled the issue before, and even depicted Mohammed on screen once with impunity.