A shoplifter looking to make a quick getaway from a Dutch supermarket after stealing a packet of meat left police a crucial piece of evidence -- his 12-year-old son. In his haste the 45-year-old thief made a solo dash to his car, batting away a supermarket worker who had flung himself on the vehicles' bonnet.
An affiliate of United States-based buyout firm Carlyle Group has defaulted on about $16,6-billion of debt and expects its lenders to seize remaining assets as the global credit crunch tightens around leveraged investors. A "successful refinancing is not possible," Carlyle Capital said.
A treaty-verification body on Friday called on 12 nations, including Syria, Iraq and Israel, to join a landmark pact for destroying stockpiles of chemical weapons. The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons made the appeal ahead of a review conference next week.
"I am not a monster. I'm also not a God. In the best case I'm an angel," muses a doctor in a Dutch play about euthanasia, before delivering a lethal injection to an old friend, a cancer patient. The Good Death is playing to packed houses across The Netherlands, which became the first country to legalise euthanasia in 2002.
A 73-year-old Austrian who has confessed to locking his daughter in a windowless cellar for 24 years and fathering her seven children will appear before a judge on Tuesday. Investigators were searching the 60 square metre cellar beneath electrical engineer Josef Fritzl's two-storey home, Franz Prucher, head of security in Lower Austria said.
The Dutch Foreign Minister met ambassadors from Muslim countries on Monday to try to cool tempers over a film by a Dutch lawmaker critical of the Qur'an and ask for protection for Dutch citizens and property. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the internet on Thursday.
Muslim nations on Friday condemned a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Qur'an of inciting violence, and Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the internet on Thursday evening, prompting an al-Qaeda-linked website to call for his death.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor ordered his militias to eat the flesh of captured enemies and United Nations soldiers, a former close aide testified on Thursday at Taylor's war crimes trial. "He [Taylor] said we should eat them. Even the UN white people -- he said we could use them as pork to eat," said Joseph "ZigZag" Marzah.
