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World News Quick Take

■AUSTRALIA

Shark attacks navy diver

A Navy diver suffered serious injuries to his hand and thigh after fighting off a shark yesterday in Sydney Harbour — the first attack there in nine years. Paul Degelder, 31, was swimming on the surface of the water with a police diver just off a Navy base when the shark attacked, Australian Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Nigel Coates said. Degelder punched the shark a couple times and it swam off, Coates said. There was no immediate information on the type of shark involved. Degelder was in stable condition after surgery. The attack happened during an underwater trial of new naval defense technologies.



■MALAYSIA

Tourist arrested after fight

A French tourist has been arrested for stripping his Malaysian girlfriend of her clothes and locking her out of his hotel room after an argument, a report said yesterday. The New Straits Times said the 46-year-old woman was found naked and cowering in a corner of the corridor by hotel staff, who covered her with a blanket and brought her clothes. The 49-year-old tourist was arrested in Kuala Terengganu in the early hours of Monday. He faces charges of criminal intimidation and “outraging the modesty” of the woman, the paper said.



■HONG KONG

Man charged with stabbing

An air-conditioning worker has been charged with the murder of a Thai businesswoman whose body was discovered bound and stabbed in a city office three years ago, a report said yesterday. So Kam-tong, 25, did not enter a plea when he appeared before a magistrate on Tuesday charged with the murder of jewel trader Charitar Kamolnoranath, the Standard newspaper reported. Kamolnoranath was found in a tax office on an air-conditioning unit on the 33rd floor of the office 12 days after she disappeared in 2005. So has been remanded in custody pending psychiatric reports after the court was told he had a history of self-harm and had refused to speak to police or his lawyer.



■INDONESIA

Tommy Suharto cleared

A court yesterday rejected a civil corruption case against the youngest son of former dictator Suharto involving the alleged misuse of US$400 million in state funds. The Central Jakarta district court cleared Hutomo Mandala Putra, popularly known as Tommy Suharto, of government allegations that he illegally sold assets to avoid paying debts to the state. “The panel of judges reject all accusations filed by the plaintiff [the Indonesian government] against all defendants,” judge Reno Lestowo told the court. The government had alleged that Tommy Suharto had illegally sold assets from troubled car importer PT Timor to five of his companies at a discount to avoid paying off state loans.



■CHINA

Drought threatens forests

The country’s worst drought in decades has affected 118 million mu (7.9 million hectares) of forests and pastures and threatened reforestation projects, the State Forestry Administration said. The drought has hampered growth of trees and shrubs in 15 provinces, including Gansu, Shanxi and Hebei, an official at the state agency said yesterday at a briefing in Beijing. The country had planned to add a record 80 million mu of new forests this year. Depleted soil moisture has increased the cost of irrigating saplings in many areas.



■GERMANY

Merkel Barbie on display

Toy company Mattel Inc debuted the Chancellor Angela Merkel Barbie doll last week at an international toy fair in the southern city of Nuremberg. It sports Merkel’s signature strawberry-blond bob, an elegant black pantsuit and low-heeled shoes. Merkel attended the fair’s opening yesterday and Wegener said she approved of her miniature doppelganger — even though Barbie’s familiar face and figure do not exactly replicate her real-life appearance.



■GERMANY

Court orders poster’s return

A court ruled on Tuesday that a Jewish man from Florida is the rightful owner of a rare poster the Gestapo seized from his father in 1938. The ruling set the stage for the return of the entire collection of thousands of posters taken by the Nazis, which are now worth at least US$5.85 million. The Berlin administrative court ruled that Hans Sachs never gave up ownership of the collection of 12,500 posters taken from his home on the orders of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Sachs, 71, sued in a test case for the return of two posters — a 1932 poster for Die Blonde Venus (Blonde Venus) starring Marlene Dietrich, and one for Simplicissimus, a satirical German weekly magazine, showing a red bulldog. The court ruled that it was unclear whether Die Blonde Venus was part of his father’s collection, but that there was no doubt about the Simplicissimus poster and that it must be returned to him. The ruling means that the court has backed the claim of Peter Sachs of Sarasota on the surviving portion of his father’s collection — some 4,000 posters at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, his attorney said. The posters include advertisements for exhibitions, cabarets, movies and consumer products, as well as political propaganda — all rare, with only small original print runs. Born in 1881, Hans Sachs was a dentist who began collecting posters while in high school. By 1905, he was Germany’s leading private poster collector.



■IRELAND

Archeologists seek graves

Archeologists began searching on Tuesday for unmarked mass graves containing hundreds of unbaptized babies buried by the Catholic Church on the edge of a Belfast cemetery. Newborns and infants who died before baptism were deemed ineligible for salvation and were not buried on consecrated ground. The records of Milltown Cemetery in Catholic west Belfast indicate that hundreds of unbaptized infants were interred in mass graves on the western edge of the cemetery.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Alleged shoe-hurler pleads

A German student accused of hurling a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) at an elite English university pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a public order offense. Martin Jahnke, a 27-year-old pathology postgraduate student at Cambridge University, spoke only to confirm his name and address and to enter his plea at the eastern city’s Magistrates’ Courts. His case was adjourned on Tuesday, at the prosecutors’ request, for a pre-trial review on March 10, and he was released on unconditional bail. If found guilty, Jahnke could face six months in prison and a £5,000 (US$7,400) fine as a maximum sentence.



■POLAND

Reward offered for killers

Warsaw on Tuesday offered a 1 million zloty (US$290,000) reward for information leading to the capture of Taliban militants who beheaded a Polish geologist in Pakistan.



■UNITED STATES

People skipping drugs: poll

Americans affected by the financial crisis may be skipping needed prescription drugs in a wrong-headed attempt to save money, a survey by Epocrates Inc said on Tuesday. Nearly 95 percent of the 700 doctors surveyed said they were concerned that patients were simply not filling prescriptions or skipping doses. The doctors also said they believed some patients were splitting pills. The healthcare information company said 55 percent of the physicians surveyed said they wrote more prescriptions for generic drugs, which are cheaper than patented drugs, last year than in 2007.



■UNITED STATES

Treasury blacklists 26 firms

The US Treasury on Tuesday blacklisted 26 companies and 14 people it said were tied to Peruvian drug lord Fernando Zevallos Gonzales and froze any assets they may have in the US. The action also prohibits US banks and consumers from conducting business deals with them. The companies included four air transportation service companies, three travel agencies, two aviation cleaning services and two printing press companies in Peru, the Treasury said. The investigation also targeted offshore companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, the department said. The list also names Zevallos’ sisters, brother, mother and business associates.



■UNITED STATES

Man with gun arrested

A 64-year-old man with a gun was arrested on Tuesday near the Congress buildings after he told police officers that he had a “delivery” for President Barack Obama, police officials said. The man had driven up to the US Capitol to talk to the special police officers who protect Congress and ask about Obama’s whereabouts so he could deliver something, Capitol Police said in a statement. Police then questioned him and searched his vehicle. “The man admitted to having a rifle in his vehicle,” police said. Police confiscated the weapon and arrested Alfred Brock from the southern state of Louisiana on charges of possessing an unregistered firearm and ammunition.



■PERU

Car accidents kill 32

At least 32 people, among them two Italian tourists, were killed and about 100 injured in two traffic accidents in Peru, police said on Tuesday. Two buses and a truck collided on the road linking Arequipa, Puno and Cusco in southern Peru, about 1,100km south of the capital Lima, police said. Twenty people were killed, among them the two tourists, and about 60 people were injured in the crash. In a second accident about 600km south of Lima on Monday, 12 people were killed and 39 injured when a bus plunged into a crevice.



■ARGENTINA

Nine missing after mudslide

Nine people were missing on Tuesday after a mudslide that prompted the evacuation of more than 700 people, officials said. The disaster occurred on Monday in the northern town of Tartagal. Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo did not confirm reports that two people were killed in the mudslide, which occurred in the province of Salta. Tartagal Mayor Sergio Leavy said that “a 75-year-old woman and another woman who may be her daughter, aged 59, have been dragged off by the current” and may be presumed dead. Randazzo said Tartagal was going through a “tragedy,” with “a third of its population” affected by the mass of water, mud and uprooted trees that came down from the mountains into the Tartagal River.


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