In the World

EL-ARISH, Egypt - A shark tore an elderly German tourist's arm off at an Egyptian Red Sea resort, killing her almost immediately, security and diving officials said Sunday, only days after sharks mauled four other European tourists in the waters.

The German woman was swimming in the waters off Sharm el-Sheikh, a famed diving and vacation resort in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to brief the media.

"It was definitely a shark attack," said Hesham Gabar, the head of Egypt's Chamber of Diving and Water Sports.

Sunday's fatal attack, which forced authorities to indefinitely close the resort's beaches, came after oceanic whitetip sharks mauled three Russians and a Ukrainian tourist last week, also off Sharm el-Sheikh. In one of those attacks, a shark bit off an elderly woman's hand and tore off another woman's leg.

- AP

WARSAW, Poland - Poland's president lit a Hanukkah candle and distributed gifts to Jewish children Sunday, continuing a tradition started by his predecessor of marking the Jewish holiday.

Bronislaw Komorowski welcomed members of Warsaw's Jewish community to his residence on the fifth day of the 8-day-long festival of lights. Komorowski's predecessor, Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash in April, began a yearly tradition of marking Hanukkah, a gesture valued by Poland's Jews.

Poland's Jewish community was the largest in Europe before the war, but most of its 3.5 million were murdered in ghettos and death camps at the hands of Nazi Germany.

Those who survived often faced violence or discrimination under communism and many fled to Israel and elsewhere. Since communism's overthrow 20 years ago, the largely Roman Catholic nation has grown interested in honoring the Jewish life that once flourished here. - AP

ROME - A speeding car plowed into a group of bicyclists in southern Italy Sunday morning, killing eight of them and injuring two, officials said.

Mangled bikes were strewn about the scene, and the sheet-draped corpses dotted the two-lane road near Lamezia Terme, in the Calabrian "toe" of Italy where the accident occurred.

It is common in Italy to see amateur cyclists taking to small state roads on weekends. ANSA news agency said the group hit Sunday was from a local gym. The head of Italy's cycling federation, Renato Di Rocco, called it a "massacre."

ANSA said the driver, who was only slightly injured, was placed under arrest on charges of multiple homicide. A police spokesman said the man, a Moroccan national, had tested positive for marijuana. - AP

Spain's civil aviation agency said all airports were functioning normally after a wildcat strike by air traffic controllers was quashed by the government, using unprecedented emergency measures.