World Briefs

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Somali pirates hijacked a supertanker hundreds of miles off the Horn of Africa, seizing the Saudi-owned ship loaded with crude and its 25-member crew, the U.S. Navy said Monday.

It appeared to be the largest ship ever seized by pirates.

After the brazen hijacking, the pirates on Monday sailed the Sirius Star to a Somali port that has become a haven for bandits and the ships they have seized, a Navy spokesman said.

The hijacking was among the most brazen in a surge in attacks this year by ransom-hungry Somali pirates. Attacks off the Somali coast have increased more than 75 percent this year, and even the world's largest vessels are vulnerable. The Sirius Star, is 1,080 feet long — about the length of an aircraft carrier —.

NEW DELHI – Veterinarians carried out a rare blood transfusion in an attempt to save a 7-month-old wild tiger that had been attacked and beaten by angry villagers in central India.

The female cub received the emergency treatment late Sunday after blood taken from captive adults was airlifted to the zoo where the cub is being cared for, said Bimal Majumdar, the chief wildlife officer in the region. He said it was the first time a transfusion had been given to a tiger in India.

The cub, which doctors named Juhi after a fragrant white flower native to India, was still in serious condition Monday at the zoo in the city of Nagpur, some 530 miles (850 kilometers) southeast of New Delhi, he said.

India's wild tiger population has plummeted to just some 1,500 — down from about 3,600 six years ago.

SYDNEY, Australia – Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch says doomsayers who are predicting the Internet will kill off newspapers are "misguided cynics" who fail to grasp that the online world is potentially a huge new market of information-hungry consumers.

Newspaper companies in the United States and elsewhere are facing fundamental changes to their businesses as more people get their news from the Internet and other sources, and advertisers follow the market away from the paper-and-ink format.

Murdoch, the Australian-born chairman and chief executive of News Corp., said in a speech broadcast Sunday titled "The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees" that the Internet offered opportunities as well as challenges and that newspapers would always be around in some form or other.

"Too many journalists seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise," Murdoch said in a speech.