Khatami’s kin held

TEHRAN: An Iranian Web site says authorities have arrested the brother of former President Mohammad Khatami and his wife, the grand-daughter of the Islamic Revolution founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The report by the pro-reform Rahesabz Web site couldn’t be independently confirmed, but the site has been credible in the past. It says Mohammad Reza Khatami and his wife, Zahra Eshraghi, were in custody on Thursday. It gives no other details.

It would rank among the most

high-profile detentions by authorities, who have waged a massive

crackdown before events Thursday marking the 1979 Islamic

Revolution.

Shark attack

SYDNEY: An Australian man said he feared he would be dragged out to

sea when a small shark snatched

his leg near a Sydney beach on

Thursday, but he won the tug-of-war by clinging to a rock. Paul Welsh,

46, was standing in waist-deep water off a beach in the northern suburb

of Mona Vale when the shark bit his left leg, police spokeswoman Joanne Elliott said. “I was pushing my son onto waves and it just belted me from behind,” Welsh told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. “I grabbed on to the pinnacle of a rock and held

on as it tried to drag me out ... and

I won.” Welsh did not see what

attacked him, but a witness saw a

120 cm shark nearby, Elliott said.

The shark left a tooth fragment in Welsh’s leg, which was later

identified by NSW Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan as belonging

to a wobbegong, or carpet shark,

a normally docile shark species.