The world - Dec. 16, 2010

THURSDAY

A single whitetip female shark was blamed for at least three out of five attacks on tourists at a popular resort on the Red Sea in Egypt. Three Russians and a Ukrainian were attacked in the space of two days last week, and a 70-year-old German woman snorkeller died after a shark tore a piece out of her thigh and severed her forearm over the weekend.

Former Doors singer Jim Morrison was pardoned by the Florida clemency board for exposing himself at a raucous concert in 1969, an act the late singer and many concert-goers denied ever took place.

An anonymous donor dropped a 1922 gold 20 Swiss franc valued at $400 into the Salvation Army bucket outside a Sam’s Club in Kansas City. The Salvation Army will get the best price it can for the coin and use proceeds to help the homeless.

FRIDAY

Kansas University basketball fans David and Suzanne Booth paid more than $4.3 million for the faded and soiled original rules of basketball drawn up by the sport’s founder, James Naismith, in 1891. Naismith was KU’s first basketball coach.

A man in Taiwan got back the T$200,000 ($6,600) he had accidentally dropped into his plastics factory’s shredding machine, after forensic scientist Liu Hui-fen, nicknamed the “Jigsaw Expert,” pieced them back together over a seven day span. The central bank has determined that the notes have been sufficiently restored to its requirement for three-quarter completeness.

Sister Marie Thornton, a Catholic nun with a reputation for gambling trips to Atlantic City, was accused of embezzling more than $850,000 from Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, by sending phony invoices to the school to pay off personal credit card bills and expenses.

WEEKEND

Sunday’s NFL game between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants was moved to Detroit after a heavy load of snow tore and collapsed the inflatable roof over the Metrodome in Minneapolis. A blizzard Saturday dumped as much as 22 inches of snow in the metropolitan area of Minneapolis-St. Paul and stranded travelers across the upper Midwest.

Auburn junior quarterback Cam Newton collected the 76th Heisman Trophy on Saturday night. Newton was ineligible for a day this year because his father tried to extract payment from universities in exchange for his son’s commitment. Newton said he did not expect to have to return the trophy, like 2005 winner Reggie Bush, who played at USC, had to do this year.

China released from jail one of its longest-serving dissidents, the ethnic Mongolian rights activist Hada. Hada had been imprisoned in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region for the past 15 years after supporting a group which sought greater rights for ethnic Mongolians.

MONDAY

The Justice Department said it intends to appeal to a U.S. appeals court a ruling by a judge in Virginia declaring a key part of President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson sided with the state of Virginia and held that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to start buying health insurance in 2014 or face a fine.

FedEx Corp handled 16 million packages on its busiest day of the holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, marking a 13 percent increase over a year ago.

TUESDAY

Ireland’s government imposed new laws giving it extensive power to restructure its banking sector in order to meet terms laid out in an 85 billion euro ($114 billion) EU/IMF rescue package aimed at preventing total collapse of the Irish economy.

An armed man in a masked motorcycle helmet walked up to a craps table at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas and grabbed about $1.5 million in chips before escaping on a motorcycle.

English fireman Julian Lawford pleaded guilty to a charge of causing the death of Harold Lee by careless driving. Lee, 75, was trampled to death by his cows as he walked them along a country road near his home. Lawford intentionally turned on his fire truck’s lights and siren to startle the cows.

WEDNESDAY

Greek government workers went on strike, grounding flights, shutting down schools and paralyzing public transport in a nationwide walkout. This was a culmination of protests against austerity laws aimed at stemming a debt crisis. The Parliament agreed on a plan to cut wages in state-owned companies and weaken collective bargaining units.

A pair of suicide bomb blasts outside a mosque in Iran killed at least 30 people and wounded more than 100 during a Shi’ite mourning ceremony.

Compiled by Gazette staff from a variety of sources.