SAO PAULO

Police sniper asked to shoot during a World Cup game

A police sniper asked permission to open fire on an armed man seen approaching Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and other officials as they watched the June 12 opening game of the World Cup in Sao Paulo, law enforcement authorities said Friday. Permission was denied and the suspect turned out to be another policeman.

More than 60,000 spectators had packed the Itaquerao Stadium to watch the match.

Adriano Moneta, a press officer of the Sao Paulo state security secretariat that oversees security forces confirmed the incident and said “there was a communications error that was quickly fixed.” He would not reveal further details.

BERLIN

Authorities block access to Germany’s deepest cave

Authorities have sealed off the entrance to Germany’s deepest cave, a week after an injured researcher was hauled out of the cavern after a lengthy, labor-intensive rescue.

Philipp Bahnmueller, a spokesman for Bavaria’s forestry office, said the Riesending cave system’s entrance was closed off Friday with a metal grille.

Regional officials acted quickly to make sure that the highly publicized multinational rescue operation, which lasted nearly two weeks, didn’t attract inexperienced cavers seeking risky thrills.

Experts will still be granted access to the cave, whose entrance is on a mountainside near the Austrian border.

KOLKATA, India

Man presumed dead after Bengali tiger pulls him away

A Bengal tiger snatched a man off a fishing boat in eastern India, dragging him away into a mangrove swamp as his children looked on in horror, the man’s son said Friday.

The attack happened Thursday as Sushil Manjhi and his son and daughter were crab fishing in a stream in the Sunderbans National Park. The tiger leaped aboard the boat and clamped its jaws on Manjhi’s neck, said Sushil’s son, Jyotish.

The tiger “quickly flung my father on his back and gave a giant leap before disappearing into the forest,” Jyotish said by telephone from his village of Lahiripur in West Bengal state. He said he and his sister tried to beat the animal with sticks and a knife, but the thrashing had no effect. His father was dragged away and was presumed dead.

The national park is one of the largest reserves for the royal Bengal tiger. Thursday’s attack was the fourth deadly assault by a tiger this year in the Sunderbans, wildlife officials said.

– From news service reports