World briefs

Police rescued two teenage Bulgarian sisters from a circus in southern Italy which forced one of them to swim with flesh-eating piranhas for the amusement of guests, police said.

While the 19-year-old sister swam in a transparent tank, the younger, 16-year-old, was forced into a container where the circus staff tossed snakes at her. She was injured by one of the snakes, police said.

Police arrested three Italians who ran the circus south of Naples, in Salerno province, accusing them of forcing the sisters to live in virtual slavery.

The women were paid €100 per week and lived in a trailer that had previously been used to transport animals, they said.

Spy cameras at work

German authorities are investigating allegations that international discount chain store Lidl employed detectives and used cameras to spy on thousands of workers in stores across Germany.

Lidl, which has a network of about 2,700 stores across Germany as well as retail outlets in almost every European country, denied it was spying on its employees.

Hidden cameras gathered the information, along with detectives who recorded their findings, said Stern which noted that staff had been told the cameras were installed to catch thieves.

But union representatives were outraged. "The report reaches far into workers' private lives," Verdi services union representative Achim Neumann told Reuters TV.

The state ministry is taking action.

Shakespeare goes digital

A US and British library plan to reproduce online all 75 editions of William Shakespeare's plays printed in the quarto format before the year 1641.

The Bodleian Library, in Oxford and Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington DC, have joined forces to download their collections, building on the work of the British Library which digitised its collection of quarto editions in 2004.

In the absence of surviving manuscripts, the quartos - Shakespeare's earliest printed editions - offer the closest known evidence of what Shakespeare might actually have written, and what appeared on the early modern English stage.

Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more between about 1590 and 1613. He died in 1616.

Fujimori sleeps in court

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori apologised for not wearing socks to his trial yesterday and for falling asleep in the previous court session, when a frustrated judge rang a bell to wake him.

Mr Fujimori, 69, said medication he takes to improve his circulation and marathon court sessions three times a week have left him exhausted, with a bad back and aching legs.

"I ask for forgiveness," he told Supreme Court Judge Cesar San Martin at his trial on human rights crimes.

The judge accepted Fujimori's apology, two days after he shouted to rouse the aging former leader from a deep slumber.

Mr Fujimori faces up to 30 years in prison on charges he ordered a military death squad to carry out two massacres that killed 25 people during his 1990-2000 rule, when the Andean country was battling leftist guerrillas.

Bailed over attack on priest

A teenager appeared in court yesterday charged with religiously aggravated actual bodily harm against a priest in east London.

Babul Islam, 19, a grocery assistant of Barnardo Street, was bailed after appearing at Thames Magistrates' Court, Scotland Yard said.

Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, suffered cuts and bruises after being hit in the grounds of St George-in-the-East church in Canon Street Road, near Whitechapel, earlier this month.

Mr Islam is due back in court next month, a spokesman said.

Flees half naked to evade mouse

A man in Germany fled his home half naked for cold, snow-swept streets to escape a mouse in his living room.

"He said there was nothing he was more afraid of," police in Goettingen said in a statement.

After an emergency call in the early hours, officers in the central town found the 23-year-old wearing only his boxer shorts and slippers at a phone booth near his home.

Police failed to track down the animal, but told the man it was safe to go home. He went to relatives instead.