■ AUSTRALIA
Swimmer attacked by shark
A shark attacked a swimmer at Bondi Beach, leaving him with deep bite marks on his arm before he fought it off by punching it on the nose. It was the first such attack at Bondi in 70 years. Channel Ten news said Scott Wright was enjoying a Friday night swim at the Sydney beach, which attracts thousands of people every day, when felt the shark latch on to his arm. Wright told the network that he fought off the shark, then made his way to shore but passed out on some rocks, where his girlfriend found him hours later on Saturday morning. "The shark attacked me, grabbed hold of my arm and wouldn't let go," Wright told Ten. So I ended up punching him in the nose and trying to fight him off. "I thought I was a goner, I thought I was going to die."
■ CHINA
19 missing after accident
Nineteen people were missing yesterday after a Liberian ship collided with a fishing boat in the East China Sea, the Xinhua news agency said. Only one person was rescued after the accident late on Saturday in which the fishing boat, from the eastern province of Zhejiang, capsized, Xinhua said, quoting the Zhejiang Maritime Affairs Bureau. It gave no further details.
■ INDIA
Man bites dog
Upset that a stray rabid dog was fleeing with a duck from his compound, a man in the southern part of the country caught the animal, wrestled with it and bit it hard in the throat before it was beaten to death, a newspaper said. A report in the Hindustan Times on Friday said that the dog had become a menace to villagers in Pakakkadavu, in the Kollam district of Kerala state, which, like most of the country, has a large stray dog population. The 65-year-old man wrestled with the dog in a ditch near his home on Wednesday and bit it so hard that it bled from its neck while one of his hands was in the grip of the animal's mouth, the report said. Neighbors separated the two and beat the dog to death. The man was in the state capital receiving anti-rabies treatment, the paper said.
■ INDIA
Protesters demand college
Police fired at thousands of protesters who turned violent during a demonstration demanding a college in their town in the country's portion of Kashmir on Saturday, killing one person and wounding at least five others, police said. Violence erupted as the protesters blocked the main highway connecting Srinagar, the summer capital of the country's Jammu-Kashmir state, with the rest of the country, said Ashiq Bukhari, a police officer. They were protesting the government decision on Friday rejecting their demand to set up a new college in Magam, a town 25km north of Srinagar. Chanting anti-government slogans, they torched a government bus and threw rocks at police who tried to disperse them, Bukhari said.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Inventor eases concerns
The inventor of a worm-driven composting toilet has flushed away concerns from bureaucrats that the system traumatized the wriggly creatures, local media reported yesterday. Coll Bell, who built the "wormorator" as an alternative to septic tanks, was asked to get an expert's report on its mental impact on the tiger worms after an official became concerned during a site visit, the Sunday Star Times said. "She felt that the worms were being unfairly treated, being expected to deal with human feces, and that it could affect them in a psychological way," Bell told the newspaper.
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