The story of a cat who visits his master’s tomb and brings him little presents on an almost daily basis a year after the man’s death has moved the inhabitants of a village in central Italy.
“He brings little twigs, leaves, toothpicks, plastic cups. A bit of everything really,” Renzo Iozzelli’s widow Ada said from Montagnana, a mountain village near Florence.
“Sometimes he comes with me and sometimes he goes on his own. The whole town knows about him now!” Toldo the cat, a grey-and-white three-year-old tomcat, followed Iozzelli’s funeral procession last year and has continued going to the cemetery ever since, a habit usually ascribed to dogs.
Argentina to hand out 82m condoms
Argentina plans to give out 82 million condoms nationwide in a campaign against sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, the Health Ministry said.
The condoms will be handed out at health centres, schools, prisons, bars and nightclubs, as well as through a network of nearly 3,000 fixed spots at public agencies.
The free distribution of condoms – and of 17 million lubricating gels – aims to “ensure access to preventative methods against sexually transmitted diseases,” the ministry said in a statement. Lubrication helps prevent condoms from tearing and helps avoid abrasions, which could lead to contaminated blood infecting the partner.
In Argentina, about 5,500 people are newly-diagnosed with HIV each year, and “90 per cent of new infections come from sex without using condoms,” it added.
Strong German demand to see Stasi files
More than 88,000 Germans applied last year to see the files kept on them by the hated and feared Stasi secret police of the former East Germany, the archives office said yesterday, some 23 years after the Berlin Wall fell.
A total of 88,231 applications were made last year, up around 10 per cent on 2011, the archive office said, showing interest remains strong.
Since 1992, when the archives were opened and got more than half a million requests, the office has received nearly three million applications from people wanting to see what the Stasi had on them.
The East Berlin-based Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi, was one of the world’s most effective instruments for state repression during its nearly 40 years of existence.
It employed more than 270,000 people during the Cold War, making the East German population the most intensely monitored in the Eastern bloc.