SYRIA
Syria, Hezbollah step up attacks
The Syrian government and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah intensified their assault on Syrian rebels in the town of Qusair on Saturday, unleashing the heaviest shelling since the battle began a week ago, Syrian anti-government activists said. The battle raged as neighboring Lebanon commemorated the 13th anniversary of the end of Israel’s 15-year occupation of its southern region, which is widely credited to Hezbollah’s years of guerrilla warfare. In Qusair, rocket and artillery attacks killed 22 people, wounded dozens and destroyed houses and buildings where some civilians are living, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
ISRAEL
Family cashes in on scroll fragments
Parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls are up for sale — in tiny pieces. Nearly 70 years after the discovery of the world’s oldest biblical manuscripts, the Palestinian family who originally sold them to scholars and institutions is now quietly marketing fragments the family says it has kept in a Swiss safe deposit box. Most of these scraps are barely postage-stamp-sized, and some are blank. But evangelical Christian collectors and institutions in the U.S. have forked out millions of dollars for a chunk of this archaeological treasure. The sales have angered Israel’s government antiquities authority. William Kando said his family offered its remaining fragments to the antiquities authority and other Israeli institutions, but they could not afford them.
GERMANY
Vintage Apple sells for $668,000
An auctioneer says one of Apple’s first computers — a functioning 1976 model, which originally sold for $666 — sold for a record $668,000. German auction house Breker said Saturday an Asian client bought the so-called Apple 1, which the tech company’s founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built in a family garage. Breker sold one last year for $636,250. Breker said the computer bears Wozniak’s signature and a business transaction letter from the late Jobs also was included.
INDIA
Guerrillas kill at least 16 in India
At least 16 people, including a prominent politician, were killed Saturday when Maoist guerrillas ambushed a convoy of political leaders in the state of Chhattisgarh, the authorities said. Among the dead were five police officers. The politician, Mahendra Karma, a senior member of the Chhattisgarh Indian National Congress Party, was killed while the state party president, Nandkumar Patel, as well as his newly married son have gone missing, said Mukesh Gupta, a state police official. The victims were in a convoy of vehicles, escorted by the police, that was headed to Jagdalpur from Sukma in central India.
UNITED KINGDOM
Zookeeper dies after tiger mauling
A zookeeper who was mauled by a Sumatran tiger at an animal park has died, British police said Saturday. Sarah McClay, 24, was in the big cat’s enclosure at South Lakes Wild Animal Park in northwest England’s Cumbria when she was injured Friday, police said. The park’s owner, David Gill, said McClay had worked at the park for several years and was “very proficient” in handling big cats, but that the park has strict safety rules against entering the tiger’s enclosure. McClay was taken by air ambulance to a hospital, where she died. The tiger has been locked in its enclosure since the attack.
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