World Briefs

The man behind Europe’s biggest and fastest surf machine said he is confident the £2 million attraction will help clean up Magaluf’s boozy reputation in Majorca.

The FlowBarrel is one of two “man-made waves” at the recently launched luxury hotel Wave House in the Majorcan resort. It is the only surf machine on the continent able to recreate a barrel wave – and has attracted worldwide interest from the extreme sports community. Some of the biggest names in the rising sport of flow boarding have been putting the 50mph ride, and smaller sister the FlowRider, through its paces ahead of its official opening to the public this weekend.

The attractions are the brainchild of US businessman Tom Lochtefeld, whose dream of taking the sport of surfing beyond the beach became a reality in the 1990s.

Hitler ‘saved Jewish veteran’

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler intervened to prevent a Jewish First World War veteran being sent to a death camp, a German Jewish newspaper has reported.

The quarterly Jewish Voice says that a newly discovered letter appears to show Hitler wanted Erich Hess to be spared persecution because the two had served in the same German army unit.

Hess died in 1983. The newspaper says the letter from the SS paramilitary organisation was discovered in official archives containing files the Nazi secret police, or Gestapo, kept on Jewish lawyers and judges.

Historian Susanne Mauss, who found the letter, told the Associated Press its authenticity is corroborated by other documents, including one owned by Hess’ daughter Ursula.

Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust under Hitler’s rule.

Kitten in bin lorry ordeal

A three-week-old kitten was saved from being crushed to death in a recycling truck after it was dumped in a bin.

During its ordeal the female tortoiseshell kitten was thrown into a bin full of cardboard which was then emptied into the back of a waste truck.

As the truck’s crusher began operating, two bin men heard her cries and immediately stopped the mechanism.

The men, who were completing their round on Cornwall Street in Plymouth, Devon, UK, then saw the kitten fall from the crusher’s blades. The kitten, which has since been named Lucky, was unharmed in the incident. She was taken to the Devon Contract Waste depot in Exeter, where she has been adopted by the staff.

Cutting prison expenses

The Spanish region of Catalonia is to stop giving evening snacks to prisoners as part of cost-cutting measures. Inmates will no longer receive the customary evening piece of fruit or pastry.

Other measures include doubling the price of meals for guards.

A Brazilian college student has confessed to faking her own kidnapping as an excuse for not handing in a year-end university project.

Student fakes kidnapping

Susan Paola Fadel Correia, 22, initially alleged she was abducted by three men, then tied up and held for 24 hours before being released. Para state police said she admitted that she spent the 24 hours at the home of a friend.

She said she “didn’t want to upset her mother” with news of her problems at school.

She has been charged with making false accusations.