World Briefs

Swedish director Daniel Lind Lagerlof is missing and presumed dead after he did not return from a scouting mission on Sweden’s west coast.

The 42-year-old Lagerlof was scouting locations for The Fjallbacka Murders, the film and TV-series adaptation of Camilla Lackberg’s best-selling crime franchise, when he disappeared. (AFP)

Relic stolen

Masked thieves have raided an abbey in Ireland and stolen a Christian relic which is said to be part of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, police said yesterday.

The relic, held in a 14th-century silver artefact containing two crosses and two dark stones, has been an object of devotion since around 1180, the priest at Holy Cross Abbey in County Tipperary said.

Father Thomas Breen appealed for the thieves to return the 30-centimetre relic, which he said was of little commercial value but had “immeasurable worth in religious devotional practice”. (AFP)

Satellite fragments

A German satellite around the size of a car is speeding towards earth, officials said Wednesday, due to re-enter the atmosphere later this month but with little idea where fragments could land.

The X-ray observatory, named ROSAT, is expected to return to earth between October 20 and 25, travelling at a speed of around 28,000 kilometres per hour, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) said in a statement.

“The latest studies reveal that it is possible that up to 30 individual pieces weighing a total of 1.6 tonnes may reach the surface of the earth,” the DLR said in a statement on its website. (AFP)

Shark attack?

A man who vanished while swimming at a popular Australian beach is likely to have been the victim of a great white shark, police said.

Bryn Martin, 64, was last seen early on Monday morning in calm water on his regular daily swim off Cottesloe Beach in Perth. He was due to meet his family for breakfast but never turned up.

Police divers found his swimming trunks in the sea later in the day, and said the damage to them was consistent with a shark attack.

Local police official Neil Blair said the missing man’s wife confirmed they were the type of trunks her husband had worn. (AFP)

Cocaine trafficking

A Gambian court yesterday sentenced eight foreigners, one of them posthumously, to 50 years in prison for trafficking cocaine worth a billion dollars.

The convicts are three Venezuelans, two Dutchmen, a Mexican and a Nigerian, an AFP correspondent reported.

Another accused Venezuelan died before the court gave its verdict. (AFP)

Vehicle pile-up

Heavy fog led to a 51-vehicle pile-up on the highway linking Chile's capital Santiago to the port city of Valparaiso today, killing five people and injuring more than 20.

Police said the accident started when one small vehicle stopped suddenly due to lack of visibility in the dense morning fog which was made worse, witnesses said, by smoke from the burning of nearby fields. (PA)

Railway probe

Germany yesterday launched an investigation for “sabotage” after several arson attempts targeting Berlin’s railways, which were blamed on left-wing extremists.

“The federal prosecutor’s office today took charge of the investigation... because of accusations related to sabotage aimed at undermining the constitution,” spokesman Stefan Schmidt said.

At least nine separate attacks, involving a dozen or so incendiary devices, have been recorded since Monday on railway lines in and around Berlin, interior ministry spokesman Jens Teschke told a regular news briefing yesterday. (AFP)

Call for Bush arrest

Amnesty International called on Canadian authorities yesterday to arrest and prosecute George W. Bush, saying the former US President authorised “torture” as he directed the US-led war on terror.

Mr Bush is expected to attend an economic summit in Surrey in Canada’s westernmost British Columbia province on October 20.

London-based Amnesty made a case for Mr Bush’s legal responsibility for a series of human rights violations in a memorandum submitted last month to Canadian authorities but only now released to the media. (AFP)

Sex with boy

A district nurse accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy let his younger brother drive her NHS car after he had drunk 16 cans of beer, a professional standards panel heard yesterday.

The youngster told how he was left traumatised and needing counselling after walking in on them having sex.

District nurse Victoria Horsley, 36, of Benllech, Anglesey, north Wales, is accused of having sex with the boy's older brother. (PA)