■ United States
Shark attack injures boy
For a second time in three days, vacationers on Florida Panhandle beaches heard screams for help and saw a bloody pool of water as rescuers tried to fight off an attacking shark. This time the victim, Craig Adam Hutto, 16, of Lebanon, Tennessee, survived the attack but his leg was amputated and he remained in critical condition late Monday. Doctors said he was expected to survive. Three days earlier and about 130km, 14-year-old Jamie Marie Daigle died from her injuries after her leg was mutilated by a bull shark.
■ United States
Tabloid makes amends
A tabloid promised to give money to an organization for burn victims after labeling as "ugly" a police officer who suffered disfiguring burns in a crash while on duty. American Media Inc, owner of the Weekly World News, which ran a list of the "top 10 ugliest people" in its Feb. 7 issue, agreed Monday to make a donation to the Foundation for Burns and Trauma. The tabloid also ran a post-surgery photo of the officer and his wife with the article. The amount of the donation to the foundation, which provides care to burn victims in Arizona, was not disclosed but those involved called it "significant." Officer Jason Schechterle suffered fourth-degree burns to his hands and face when his patrol car was hit from behind by a taxi and exploded in flames in 2001.
■ Lebanon
Parliament chooses speaker
Lebanon's newly-elected parliament re-elected a pro-Syrian, Nabih Berri, as speaker yesterday in a move seen as a political compromise by the anti-Syrian coalition which won the recent elections, the first conducted without Syrian influence in 30 years. The parliament voted 90 in favor of Berri in a secret ballot. Another 37 lawmakers in the 128-member legislature cast blank votes in what was seen as a protest against Berri. One vote went to Bassem Sabei, an anti-Syrian lawmaker.
■ United States
Mistake ends in terror alert
A mistaken CIA analysis of an Arabic-language television broadcast triggered a major terror alert in US in 2003 and the cancelation of nearly 30 international flights, NBC News said. The color-coded terror alert system went from yellow to orange after CIA agents thought they saw secret numbers encoded in the moving text at the bottom of the screen of an Al-Jazeera broadcast, NBC said late Monday. The "scrawl" was thought to contain attack dates, flight numbers and geographic coordinates for targets, which included the White House, Seattle's tallest structure, the Space Needle, and even the small town of Tappahanock in Virginia.
■ United States
Reagan named No. 1
The US now regards the late president Ronald Reagan as the greatest American ever. Edging out by a nose Abraham Lincoln -- the man who abolished slavery and guided the country through civil war -- Reagan, the B-movie star whose presidency is commonly regarded as having brought down the Soviet bloc, won the popular vote to be crowned the greatest American ever. While assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr came third, just ahead of George Washington, the country's first president and the man considered father of the nation, some of the most notable names in US history -- the Nobel prize-winning scientist Albert Einstein; the inventors of the aeroplane, Orville and Wilbur Wright; and the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong -- did not make it into the top 10.
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