Almost 100 tombs of German soldiers killed in the two World Wars were desecrated overnight at a cemetery in eastern France, police said yesterday.
Crosses were broken and tombstones overturned in the Guebwiller Franco-German cemetery in the Alsace region. The vandalism affected 95 tombs.
An offensive message was written on at least one of the tombs, the Haut-Rhin departmental police authority said, without giving further details.
President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote a letter to his German counterpart Horst Koehler, denouncing the desecrations as "revolting and cowardly", the French presidential palace said. (AFP)
Mafioso nabbed in Spain
Police in Madrid have arrested an Italian mafioso suspected of leading a network that smuggled drugs from South America to Europe, Italian authorities said yesterday.
Spanish police zeroed in on Pasquale Locatelli, known as Mario of Madrid, thanks to a tip-off from Italian counterparts who had previously arrested his son at Bergamo airport in northern Italy, Naples police said in a statement.
The 58-year-old Locatelli was sought under an investigation that started back in 2005 and which uncovered evidence that Naples' Camorra mafia was active transiting hashish and cocaine from Spain's Costa del Sol.
Known to be associated with the Mazzarella clan targeted by the probe, the Bergamo native was identified as a major supplier of hash and cocaine to the Naples market. (AFP)
WHO computers stolen
Three Macedonians have been arrested while making their getaway from Geneva to France after stealing a safe and 10 computers from the World Health Organisation, local police said yesterday.
Geneva police spokesman Jean-Philippe Brandt said that after questioning the three, "police were able to determine that the safe and the computers were the ones stolen a little earlier from the WHO."
The three were caught by Swiss border police while they were trying to cross into France overnight on Thursday. (AFP)
Couple let baby die
An internet-addicted South Korean couple were yesterday found guilty of letting their baby starve to death as they played online.
They spent most of their days at an internet cafe raising a virtual daughter in an online game instead of caring for their baby. The three-month-old died last September.
The husband, 41, and the wife, 25, were given two years in prison. The wife's term was suspended because she is pregnant with a second child. (PA)
'Serbs becoming couch potatoes'
Serbs are getting ever more devoted to television with the average person spending more than five hours a day in front of the screen, according to a survey done by AGB Nielsen Media Research.
The average Serbian citizen watches television shows for 363 minutes per day, a survey published yesterday of viewer behaviour in the first three months of 2010 showed.
In April, considered to be a "slower" month for TV due to better weather in spring, the Serbs have spent 320 minutes watching television, said Darko Brocic of the AGB Nielsen company.
Compared with 2009, Serbs spent 38 minutes more in front of their TV screens, Mr Brocic said.
The most watched programmes are local TV series, reality shows and sports, while the most devoted audience are pensioners and children, the survey found. (AFP)
Pigeon held over spying!
Indian police are holding a pigeon under armed guard after it was caught on an alleged spying mission for arch rivals and neighbours Pakistan, media reported yesterday.
The white-coloured bird was found by a local resident in India's Punjab state, which borders Pakistan, and taken to a police station 40 kilometres from the capital Amritsar. The pigeon had a ring around its foot and a Pakistani phone number and address stamped on its body in red ink.
Police officer Ramdas Jagjit Singh Chahal told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency that they suspected the pigeon may have landed on Indian soil from Pakistan with a message, although no trace of a note has been found. Officials have directed that no-one should be allowed to visit the pigeon, which police say may have been on a "special mission of spying".
The bird has been medically examined and was being kept in an air-conditioned room under police guard. (AFP)
Daredevil crosses Channel
Like a scene from the Disney Pixar movie Up, US daredevil Jonathan Trappe soared across the English Channel yesterday in a chair slung under a multi-coloured cluster of helium balloons.
"It was immensely beautiful, iconic. The white cliffs of Dover, and then the coast of France. It was such a quiet, peaceful experience," the pilot told Sky News television after landing in a cabbage field in northern France. Mr Trappe made the record-breaking flight in a wicker basket borne aloft by a cloud of 55 helium-filled spheres, travelling around 100 kilometres from Ashford in Kent, England to a French field outside Dunkirk.
Once he was over dry land he cut some of the balloons free and drifted safely to earth, confirming his status as the renowned pioneer of the flight technique he has called cluster ballooning. (PA)