Surfer mauled by shark in AustraliaSYDNEY — A professional surfer was mauled by a shark off the Australian east coast Wednesday evening, officials said.Brett Connellan, 22, was flown by helicopter to Sydney’s St. George Hospital in serious condition after he was attacked, police said.He suffered injuries to a thigh and a hand in the attack off Bombo Beach and was helped 100 yards to shore by fellow surfer Joel Trist, police said.Trist told reporters today he paddled as fast as he could toward his friend when he heard him scream. The shark had vanished before Trist covered the 50 yards.“I said to him: ‘What’s it like?’ and he said: ‘It’s not good.’ And at that point I knew something was horribly wrong,” Trist said.

Helicopters search for missing studentKANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Russian search using helicopters pressed on for a U.S. student Wednesday, three days after officials say he went missing in below-freezing conditions after venturing out before dawn from a guest house in a mountainous stretch of Siberia.Investigators in the Russian republic of Buryatia say 25-year-old Colin Madsen of Jefferson City, Mo., disappeared Sunday, a day after he arrived with another American as part of a group from Irkutsk, where he was a university student.Regional media outlets reported Madsen vanished from the tiny resort village of Arshan.Madsen and the rest of his group planned to hike in the mountains Sunday but Madsen “under unclear circumstance” went missing “without a trace.”