German police are investigating an anonymous threat against Berlin Zoo's director after he confessed he once killed four kittens by breaking their necks.
Zoo Director Bernhard Blaszkiewitz said he had killed the wild kittens in 1991, saying they posed a threat to the zoo's animals as they can carry disease.
"I can tell you that the zoo reported a threat and we are investigating," a Berlin police spokesman said. He declined to give more details.
EU condemns Dutch Koran film
European Union foreign ministers condemned yesterday a Dutch film that accuses the Koran of inciting violence, but said its author had a right to make it under the bloc's free speech principles.
Geert Wilders, a Dutch parliamentarian and leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the Internet on Thursday, prompting an Al-Qaeda-linked website to call for his death and attacks on Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan.
The film Fitna - an Arabic term sometimes translated as 'strife' - intersperses images of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and Islamist bombings with quotations from the Koran, Islam's holy book.
Text messages to erotic dancer
Finland's foreign minister faced calls for his resignation yesterday after a tabloid newspaper published a suggestive text message he had sent to an erotic dancer.
Ilkka Kanerva sent about 200 text messages to Johanna Tukiainen, 29, and at first said they were related to her performing at his 60th birthday party.
On Friday he admitted the messages were not totally appropriate.
"I would not present them in Sunday School, but they are not totally out of line either," the daily Helsingin Sanomat quoted him as saying.
The Ilta-Sanomat daily said that in one of the messages Kanerva had asked Tukiainen: 'Would you like to do it in an exotic place? Where could it be?'
When Kanerva was asked whether 'it' referred to sex, he only said it was obvious that his message was an answer to an earlier question, Finnish News Agency STT said.
Fellow parliamentarian Tuija Nurmi, also of the conservative party, has said Kanerva should resign, and opposition leader Eero Heinaluoma said the situation cannot continue as it is now.
'Deep clean' deadline
Around 13 National Health Service hospitals in England will miss a government deadline to complete a "deep clean" of their wards to help combat superbug infections, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said yesterday.
But the country's other 170 general hospitals will complete the 60 million pound hygeine blitz by the March 31 target date, he told BBC television.
Bradshaw said the independent Healthcare Commission watchdog would now follow up the programme by conducting inspections "to make sure that all hospitals have hygeine and cleanliness policies that are as good as the best."
The national deep clean, announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last September, has been criticised as a publicity stunt.
China bans Italian mozzarella cheese
China banned sales of Italian mozzarella cheese yesterday after Italy ordered a recall of the product because it might be contaminated with cancer-causing dioxins.
The Chinese government agency that supervises product quality ordered importers to stop selling the cheese and to recall Italian mozzarella that had already been sold, the official Xinhua agency said.
The mailing or carrying of the cheese into China were also banned.
"Every batch of other kinds of cheese products from Italy must go through laboratory tests before they are allowed to enter the country," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine was quoted as saying.
Muslim defends baptism by Pope
A Muslim whose baptism by Pope Benedict over Easter sparked criticism from Muslim scholars has defended his conversion and accused critics of trying to manipulate the event to attack the pontiff.
The baptism of Magdi Allam, an outspoken journalist known in Italy for his stinging attacks on Islam, has put a spotlight on the pope's often tense relationship with Muslims and upset proponents of Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Allam, who has said Islam is 'physiologically violent', rejected as 'groundless and malicious' criticism of his Roman Catholic baptism at an Easter eve service in St Peter's Basilica.
"My conversion (...) has been manipulated by many sides to discredit me and accuse the Holy Father," Allam said in a letter published yesterday in the Corriere della Sera daily, where he is deputy editor.
The Egyptian-born Allam rejected suggestions that a lower-key, private conversion would have been more appropriate.