Burglars broke into the former headquarters of East Germany's Stasi secret police and stole several items including a Lenin portrait, a telephone and even pieces of coal, police said yesterday.
The thieves forced open a window of the building in Berlin, where thousands of Stasi employees worked during the times of the German Democratic Republic and which today houses a museum, police said in a statement. "The burglars apparently looked for items without significant material value but which might be interesting to collectors," the statement said.
Among the stolen items were a coal briquet - a block of compressed coal dust - with an imprint reading "30 years GDR", an ice hockey stick from Moscow, a wooden plank featuring a portrait of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin and a white telephone, it said.
The burglars, who entered the building on Friday night, also broke into the room where former Stasi head Erich Mielke had his office.
Japan forced to redesign coin
After minting 4.8 million commemorative coins, Japan must change the design due to copyright infringement.
The original design of the coin, celebrating the centenary of Japanese emigration to Brazil, showed bronze sculptures of parents and a child standing in Santos, Brazil, where the first batch of immigrants landed in 1908. But the Brazilian sculptor of the work refused to let the design be used for the 500-yen (€3.24) coin, the Japanese Finance Ministry said.
Japan originally announced the creation of the coin in April 2007, with an aim to distribute it by the end of March 2008, believing that an immigrants association in Brazil owned the bronze memorial. But the association later found that the artist also held the right to his work. The new design will feature the ship that took the first Japanese immigrants to Brazil, placed over the shape of the Latin American nation.
"The minted commemorative coins are made of the same materials as the regular 500-yen coin so we will simply recycle them," said a finance ministry official. The ministry will spend five to 10 million yen (€32,430 to €64,860 million) redesigning the coin.
Estonians in big clean-up
Tens of thousands of Estonians scoured fields, streets, forests and riverbanks over the weekend to amass tonnes of rubbish in the Baltic state's first national clean-up. Using Google maps from the internet and global positioning technology to locate junk, people collected every kind of garbage from tractor batteries to plastic bottles and paint tins and ferried it, often in their own vehicles, to central dumps.
The campaign, which aimed to collect up to 10,000 tonnes of rubbish, was organised by internet entrepreneurs.
The organisers mapped and photographed illegal rubbish tips, then put them on the internet using Google Earth as a platform. They then used satellite photos and global positioning system (GSP) devices for accuracy in finding the clean-up sites and asked people to register on the internet to participate. Estonia inherited a mass of rubbish after it regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 but it has only added to the problem since.
True Lesbians of Greek island
Some residents on the Greek island of Lesvos say they are the only true Lesbians and they want gay groups to stop using the word. Several residents have begun legal proceedings and pending a ruling have asked a court to ban the Gay and Lesbian Community of Greece from using the word lesbian in their title. Plaintiff Dimitris Lambrou says the dispute is over identity and not sexuality. "We must protect our identity, the name that defines our origin from being stolen," he said. "Our legal actions have nothing to do with the sexual orientation of our adversaries."
Lesvos, in the Aegean Sea just off the Turkish coast, is the birthplace of the seventh-century BC poet Sappho, whose love poems inspired the term lesbian for gay women. The island has become a gathering spot for gay women from around the world, especially at Sappho's village of Eressos.
Evangelia Vlami, who is representing the Gay and Lesbian Community of Greece, said: "This is ridiculous. The term has been accepted by society, by scientists, historically, and by the United Nations," she said.
The first hearing is set for next month.
SPD leader may auction beard
The head of Germany's Social Democrats, who has ambitions to be his country's next leader, is thinking about donating his beard to charity, but is not quite sure. Kurt Beck, who as party leader has a strong claim to lead the SPD into next year's national election, said in a panel discussion in Mainz that he might shave off his beard to raise €1 million for charity, the newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported.
"It must be serious and not turn into a spectacle," he told the paper. "The event would have to help the really needy." Mr Beck's beard, like the rest of his hair, is short, grey and bristly. He recently told reporters his wife Roswitha, a hairdresser, had said he had "hair like a guinea pig".
He currently trails conservative chancellor Angela Merkel by over 50 points in personal opinion poll ratings - leading to speculation that he may face a challenge with his party for the right to run against her.
Car plates fetch €6 million
An auction for 57 special car registration plates fetched some €6.356 million, with the double-digit plate 50 G being sold for some €600,000, WAM official news agency reported. More than 300 bidders took part in the auction organised by Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority, which saw a fierce race to grab the few double-digit numbers on offer.
The registration number 23 G came second after going for 2.92 million dirhams (€516,600), while the number 32 G was sold for 2.5 million dirhams (€441,700). Triple-digit plate number 700 F was sold for 1.3 million dirhams (€230,000), while four-digit plate 8000 G got 690,000 dirhams (€122,000).
Auctions for car registration plates have become a fashion in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates with auction organisations frequently netting millions of dollars. In February, a wealthy Emirati splashed out a record 52.2 million dirhams (€9.21 million) on an Abu Dhabi registration plate bearing number "1". In May last year, another one spent more than €3.3 million for the number "5".