NEW DELHI — A 15-year-old boy who allegedly delivered a baby by Caesarean section in an attempt to set a world record as the youngest surgeon apparently fled as police prepared to arrest him on Tuesday.

Raj Sekharan, superintendent of police in Tiruchirappalli district in southern Tamil Nadu state, said the boy had absconded and police were looking for him.

On Monday police arrested the parents of Dhileepan Raj, both doctors who supervised their son while he performed the Caesarean section. They were charged with cheating, forgery of records, endangering human life, concealing evidence and abetting a crime.

The two were jailed awaiting a court trial. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to seven years each, Sekharan said.

An Indian Medical Association chapter in the southern state of Tamil Nadu said last week that Dr. K. Murugesan showed a video recording of his son, Dhileepan Raj, performing a Caesarean birth.

The baby Raj delivered was born with a lump on the spinal cord, Prasad said, but the birth defect had nothing to do with the Caesarean surgery.

Amarilis Espinoza, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records, said in an e-mail Guinness does not endorse such attempts because they encourage the practice of "bad medicine."

BERLIN — A resourceful 78-year-old retiree saved herself and others from possible serious injuries Monday after her taxi driver suddenly died of a heart attack on the highway, police said.The man was driving the woman on Germany's autobahn near the northern city of Luebeck when he suddenly died, and the car careened into a guard rail.The woman, who was in the front passenger seat, didn't panic, but instead reached across and yanked the car out of gear, then pulled the hand brake.The car then slowed to a stop nearly 300 yards farther along the highway. She was unharmed.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has changed the rules for electing a new pope, returning to the traditional requirement that two-thirds of the cardinals in the conclave agree on a candidate, the Vatican said Tuesday.Pope John Paul II had altered the voting process in 1996, allowing the pope to be chosen by an absolute majority if the cardinals were unable to agree after several days of balloting in which a two-thirds majority was needed.In a document released Tuesday, Benedict said he was returning to the traditional voting norm, essentially reversing John Paul's reform of the centuries-old process.Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected pope on April 19, 2005, in one of the fastest conclaves in modern history. He reportedly was elected after four ballots, with 84 of the 115 votes.Benedict explained that John Paul had received a number of requests to return to the former system after he issued his 1996 document, Universi Dominici Gregis, outlining the rules for a conclave.Analysts noted that the original two-thirds requirement had served as an incentive to compromise or find a new candidate in the event of a deadlock.But with John Paul's new rules, the majority bloc in a conclave could push a candidate through by simply holding tight until the balloting shifted from the two-thirds requirement to an absolute majority."It would seem that Pope Benedict wants to ensure that whoever is elected pope enjoys the greatest possible consensus," said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.John Paul instituted the simple majority to avoid a deadlock like the one in the 13th century, when negotiations lasted three years.