World Briefs

Hundreds of Austrians stripped naked yesterday for photographer Spencer Tunick at the stadium that will host the Euro 2008 soccer final. Mr Tunick, who regularly stages such mass nude events, arranged his subjects in the coloured seats of the venue, having been told by organisers the grass was too precious.

The stadium stages seven matches of the Euro 2008 soccer championship, being jointly hosted by Switzerland and Austria next month, including the final on June 29. Sponsors of Mr Tunick's event include a body promoting the soccer festival and Austrian railways, which gave participants free tickets. Those taking part are volunteers who get a limited edition copy of the photo.

"This very special ephemeral installation that we are inviting you to be part of is devised to capture and combine the spirit of sports, the grand sweeping waves of stadium architecture and the abstract relation of the human form to modern structures," Mr Tunick said on his website.

One of Mr Tunick's latest stunts was on a Swiss glacier, where 600 people stripped off in temperatures of about 10˚C last August. His biggest was last year in Mexico City with 18,000 people.

Swimmer saved from shark

An Australian woman raced into the water and dragged to safety a swimmer who was being attacked by a large shark which had already bitten off "huge chunks" from his leg, reports said yesterday.

Joanne Lucas heard swimmer Jason Cull's cries for help as she arrived at Middleton Beach in Western Australia early on Saturday, and immediately dived into the water to help him.

"Instinct just kicked in," she told The Sunday Telegraph. "I didn't even have to think about it, which is amazing really. I just thought I had to get in there".

Mr Cull was in a stable condition in Albany Hospital late Saturday after surgery for lacerations to his left leg.

Middleton Beach, on the far south coast of Western Australia, was closed yesterday as surf rescue volunteers and fisheries officials tried to drive three white pointer sharks out to sea.

Gullible man loses €23,000 in scam

A Vietnamese man in Norway lost around €23,000 after he was led to believe that mixing the cash with a special liquid would double its value, Norwegian media reported over the weekend.

A 32-year-old Frenchman is set to stand trial in a lower court near Oslo this week on charges that he cheated a gullible Vietnamese man out of 180,000 kroner (€23,000) earlier this year, local daily Romerikes Blad (RB) reported on its website.

The victim of the con, who was not identified, was reportedly told by the Frenchman to leave a mixture of real cash with blank bills to marinate in a special liquid overnight, and the next morning he would have double the amount of cash at his disposal. But when he showed up the next morning to collect his prize, both the cash and the suspected con-artist, had disappeared.

'McCain did not vote for Bush'

Did US Republican presidential candidate John McCain vote for President George W. Bush in 2000? Liberal internet blogger Arianna Huffington says Mr McCain told her he did not. But the Arizona senator says he did vote for Mr Bush, a fellow Republican, in 2000 and campaigned for him all over the country after his own attempt to win the party's nomination failed.

The claims and counterclaims may provide an entertaining distraction from the day-to-day battle for votes for this November's presidential election, when Mr McCain will face one of two Democratic contenders, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

But Mr Huffington said in an interview the dust-up over the item she posted on her website last week has broader meaning than whether or not Mr McCain voted for his rival in the 2000 race for the Republican nomination.

"It's John McCain's relationship with the truth that's at stake here. It's not John McCain's relationship with me," Ms Huffington said.

Citizenship for WWI veteran

Canada's last known surviving veteran of World War I is becoming a Canadian citizen, the government said over the weekend.

John Babcock, 107, was born in Canada but became a US citizen in 1946 and had to give up his status as a British subject - as Canadians were designated before Canada's own citizenship act came into force a year later.

Canadian officials recently visited Mr Babcock at his home in Spokane, Washington, to give him an award, and he told them he was interested in being granted citizenship in his birth country.

"This means the last known soldier to serve Canada in World War I will forever be a Canadian," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement.

Mr Babcock was only 15 years old and lied about his age when he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He moved to the United States in the 1920s.