■ IRAQ
Reporter shot to death
An Iraqi correspondent working for the Washington Post was shot to death on Sunday while on assignment in Baghdad, the newspaper said. Salih Saif Aldin, 32, who wrote under the name Salih Dehema for security reasons, was killed in the neighborhood of Sadiyah, a statement said. It said details of the incident were still unclear. Aldin began working for the newspaper in early 2004 as a special correspondent in his hometown of Tikrit, and later moved to the capital, "where he played an instrumental role of the Post's coverage of Iraq," the newspaper said.
■ UNITED STATES
Sri Chinmoy dies at 76
Sri Chinmoy, the genial Indian-born spiritual leader who used strenuous exercise and art to spread his message of world harmony and inner peace, died on Thursday at his home in Jamaica, Queens, where he ran a meditation center. He was 76. The cause was a heart attack, said representatives of his organization, the Sri Chinmoy Center. Chinmoy spread his philosophy through his own way of life, exercising and creating art and music. He drew attention by power-lifting pickup trucks and public figures like Muhammad Ali and Sting. He said he had drawn 16 million "peace birds." He slept only 90 minutes a day, he said, and when he was not traveling to perform in concerts and spread his message, spent the time meditating, playing music, exercizing and making art.
■ IRAQ
At least 27 die in blasts
A bomb in a parked car struck worshippers heading to a Shiite mosque in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least nine people, while the death toll rose to 18 in a coordinated suicide truck bombing and ambush north of the capital. A US soldier was also struck by a roadside bomb during combat operations in southern Baghdad. Relatives and rescue workers pulled bodies from under piles of concrete bricks and rubble in the Sunni city of Samarra, where a suicide truck bomber detonated his explosives late on Saturday. At least 18 people were killed and 27 wounded, police said. The car bombing in Baghdad tore through a minibus that was to carry passengers to the Imam al-Kadhim shrine in the northwestern Kazimiyah district.
■ UNITED STATES
Anglers catch huge shark
Six friends went to a fishing tournament looking to catch some grouper. They caught a 383kg shark instead. The fight by Adlee Bruner and friends to pull the 3.4m mako shark onto the boat from the Gulf of Mexico took more than an hour on Saturday. But when they made it back to land, it was a record for the decades-old Destin Fishing Rodeo. Bruner and his fishing buddies were on a 16m charter boat with Captain Robert Hill, about 115km southwest of Destin, Florida. "It was like Jaws," Hill said.
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