A German man who killed his gay lover with a screwdriver, dismembered him and kept some of his organs in the fridge to eat later went on trial in Berlin on Tuesday. Ralf M (41) is charged with the murder of Joe R (33) a music teacher from Berlin in a case which has drawn comparisons with a cannibal trial which appalled and fascinated Germany last year.
Radical Afghan clerics on Tuesday unveiled plans to launch the country’s first Islamic television channel since the fall of the fundamentalist Taliban regime. A group of hardline religious scholars, or mullahs, said the station would counter what they say are immoral and un-Islamic programmes being broadcast by other channels.
A man who ordered a pint of frozen chocolate custard in a dessert shop got a nasty surprise inside — a piece of severed finger lost by an employee in an accident. Unlike a recent incident at a Wendy’s restaurant in California, no questions of truth have been raised about the finger found in a package from Kohl’s Frozen Custard.
A hostile takeover of mining company Gold Fields by rival Harmony would be to the detriment of black economic empowerment (BEE), the Competition Tribunal heard in Pretoria on Tuesday. Jeremy Gauntlett, SC, for Gold Fields said 28% of the company suppliers were BEE entities, compared with a Harmony figure of 9%.
Differing concerns by organised labour and business over a new draft law aimed at controlling the development of cooperatives in South Africa has once again highlighted the opposed economic philosophies of the two groupings. Business sees the future of such enterprises as being characterised by the dictates of a free market.
Two teenagers who drifted at sea for six days in a small sailing boat without food or water told on Monday how they prayed to be rescued from the shark-infested waters of the Atlantic. Josh Long (17) and Troy Driscoll (15) were found on Saturday off Cape Fear in North Carolina, having drifted for more than 160km.
Iran on Tuesday said it would resume some nuclear activities, raising the possibility that the country would be brought before the United Nations Security Council on the grounds of nuclear proliferation. Last November, Tehran agreed to suspend all nuclear activities while negotiations about its nuclear ambitions continued with Britain, France and Germany.
The family of an award-winning British filmmaker who was shot dead by the Israeli army has launched a civil action against the Israeli government on the second anniversary of his death. James Miller, from Braunton, in Devon, was filming in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza when he was fatally wounded by a soldier from the Israeli Defence Force.
An embattled Jacques Chirac will on Tuesday appear live on television in an attempt to swing reluctant France around to a yes vote in the country’s referendum for the European Constitution. On Monday, the French president wheeled out a group of ageing celebrities to bolster his lacklustre campaign.
Thousands of journalists in some of the most press-hostile countries held marches and sit-ins on Tuesday to demand an end to government censorship and jailings and to highlight the threat of killing, kidnapping and other abuses they face.
Several events were under way or scheduled for the 15th annual World Press Freedom Day.