'Dr. Death' opens shop selling human cross sections

Gunther von Hagens, the man behind the controversial anatomical Body Worlds exhibitions, on Friday reopened his Brandenburg plastination plant. The facility comes compete with a shop selling human and animal cross sections.

The provocative 64-year-old, known as “Dr. Death” in Germany, is infamous for inventing a process for transforming the bodies of people and animals into plasticised pieces for his Body Worlds shows. Von Hagens, who dresses a bit like an 19th century undertaker, caused a stir last year in Berlin, where his show “The Cycle of Life" featured dissected corpses having sex.

Now, after 15-months of renovations, von Hagens is opening the doors to his “Plastinarium” in the town of Guben in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. He called the facility a “valuable contribution to medical education, enlightenment and the advancement of health” in a statement.

In addition to offering hundreds of jobs to locals in the town of 20,000, the Plastinarium will be a place for doctors, students and healers to conduct research, a spokeswoman said. Von Hagens also plans to offer courses in plastination, in addition to renting out the exhibition space for weddings and parties amid the preserved corpses.

Meanwhile a special shop for medical professionals will sell both human and animal plastinate cross sections. A human lower-leg section will begin at €80, cranial sections will be a steep €1,500, and full-body plastinate cross sections are priced at a whopping €11,000. 

Those not willing to pay quite as much can purchase life-sized photographs of the plastinates.  Many critics have accused von Hagens of exploiting the dead, though all of his subjects have donated their bodies to the plastinator. But local parish priestMichael Domke said that his church would not protest the Plastinarium’s reopening as it did in 2006 for fear of increasing publicity.

“We’re not saying anything,” he said. 

Meanwhile Guben mayor Klaus-Dieter Hübner said the revamped facility was a valuable addition to the town economy. “With 220 employees thPublish Poste Plastinarium is an important employer in the city and has also become an important economic factor,” he said, explaining that thousands of tourists and visitors were expected to descend on Guben following the opening.

Organic food neither healthier nor tastier, watchdog finds

Organic food, widely assumed to be healthier than conventional groceries, usually have no nutritional advantage at all, according to a comprehensive study released Thursday by German consumerorganisation Stiftung Warentest. In an embarrassing result for the organic food industry, the government-funded but independent foundation drew on 85 investigations over eight years to come up with an overall assessment of what's known as bio food. Only when it comes to use of pesticides does it come out in front.

The foundation concluded that organic products were not necessarily healthier, or even better-tasting, than regular groceries. Despite being on average 30 percent more expensive, there was little overall difference in quality, foundation tester Ina Bockholt told Deutschlandradio.

For example, 15 baby food products tested – 13 of which were organic products – all rated only in the “satisfactory” range, Bockholt said. The reason was that they actually contained too little fat and often too little iron for babies’ nutritional needs.

Some 45 percent of ecological products got a “good” or “very good” nutritional rating, compared with 41 percent for conventional foods. Some 15 percent of organic foods were rated “poor” – slightly higher than the 14 percent of regular products given such a score.

There was considerable variation among products, with organic performing well in some areas but poorly in others. Tee, full-cream milk and spiced cooking oils were better than their conventional counterparts, whereas organic products were worse when it came to rapeseed oils.

Bockholt however defended organic foods on ethical grounds, pointing out that someone who bought such products “invests in an ecological, animal-friendly and sustainable agricultural economy.” Some 75 percent of ecological products were pesticide-free, compared with just 16 percent of conventional groceries, she said. Yet ethical shopping carried a price tag. “Admittedly you have to say, bio products have a price: they are about 30 percent dearer,” Bockholt said.

Sweden sacks aid agency chief in major overhaul

The Swedish government has sacked the director-general of the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), Anders Nordström, and announced a major overhaul of the sternly criticised public authority.

Development aid minister Gunilla Carlsson on Thursday announced a reorganisation of Sida and appointed Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, former head of Save the Children Sweden, to lead the agency in the interim.

"I am very happy that we have been able to recruit Charlotte Petri Gornitzka as interim general-director," Gunilla Carlsson said in a press conference on Thursday. The leadership of Sida will be soon be further strengthened by the appointment of Bo Metz, who is currently a department secretary and former acting head of treasury's budget division.

The decision to reorganise Sida's leadership was announced by the government earlier on Thursday morning and the minister used the mid-morning press conference to comment on the reasons behind the decision. "In order to ensure that Sida will overcome its high-profile business, economic and organizational shortcomings, the government has today decided on measures to ensure an efficient and effective authority."

The minister penned a deeply critical article on the Newsmill website on Wednesday arguing that Swedish development aid suffers from comprehensive structural problems. "Unfortunately I have misjudged the extent of the development aid agency's challenges. The Alliance government's restructuring of Swedish development aid must therefore be intensified and the control of Sida has to be reinforced. To achieve the ambition of a development aid which optimises its benefits, full-scale changes are required."

According to Carlsson the straw which broke the camel's back was when it emerged that Swedish funds had been involved in corruption and fraud within the Zambian health sector over the course of several years, without the agency drawing attention to the problem.

Swedish National Audit Office (Riksrevisionen) has criticised Sida in both 2008 and 2009 for inadequate control of development aid to, among other countries, Zambia and Tanzania. The office was furthermore critical of the government for its lack of management of the agency and Gunilla Carlsson promised then to address the issue.

Sida has been battling with its finances for several years and in 2009 was obliged to seek the help of the National Financial Management Authority (Ekonomistyrningsverket - ESV) to bring order to its income and expenditure.

Bumbling repo men kidnap wrong woman

Stuttgart police on Wednesday said they had arrested a band of men working for a collection agency who allegedly kidnapped a woman and held her for more than a day before realising they’d snatched the wrong person.

The three men, aged 25, 36 and 54 were detained on May 21 on suspicion they kidnapped and robbed a 62-year-old woman on May 6, police said in a statement. The bumbling gang apparently thought they were abducting a relative of an indebted bus company owner, but police did not speculate on their intentions.

Investigators have managed to piece together the turn of events, which began when the men grabbed the woman around 9:15 pm on May 6 in a Neugereutdistrict parking garage and forced her into a Volkswagen Golf. There they bound her hands and feet and covered her eyes with a blindfold. 

From there they took her to a shed in Calw, some 33 kilometres from Stuttgart, where they tied her to a chair, leaving her overnight, the statement said. The following morning they put the bound woman in a car boot and drove to an old guest house near Böblingen, where they provided food and told her the reason for the kidnapping. 

But the woman turned out to be an employee of the bus company owner, and not a relative as the kidnappers thought. “After the suspects had to conclude they had the wrong person in their grip, they let her go the same day around 8:30 pm near Leonberg,” the police said, adding that the repo men took their captive’s cash and forced her to reveal her bank cardPIN number first. 

Police followed up with extensive investigation into both the victim's ordeal and her employer before finding and arresting the suspects, who are all Germancitizens.

Ryanair wins appeal on repatriation

A Swedish court ruled Wednesday that Irish low-cost airline Ryanair had no obligation to compensate a couple stranded in Brussels when one of its flights was cancelled due to heavy fog.

The Svea Appeals Court ruled that Rune and Eva-Marie Brännström were only entitled to the 322 kronor ($38) they had paid for their tickets, which the carrier had already reimbursed. "Ryanair has proven that the flight was cancelled due to extraordinary
circumstances," the court said.

The ruling overturned a lower court verdict ordering Ryanair to pay each of
them 2,325 kronor after a 2006 flight they had been booked on from Brussels toStockholm was cancelled due to heavy fog.

Ryanair had offered them a new flight two days later and reimbursed their
tickets, but they received no other compensation and Ryanair did not offer to pay for their meals or hotel.

The couple said they could not wait two days and made their own way home by taxi, train and rental car, paying for the trip themselves. The appeals court on Wednesday said Ryanair would be compensated around 300,000 kronor in trial expenses.

"I am very disappointed with the appeals court verdict," Rune Brännström
told Swedish public radio. "The consequence will be that it will be considered correct behaviour forairlines to dump their passengers. That's just not right," he said.

He said he and his wife were willing to take the case to Sweden's Supreme
Court and even to the European Union Court of Justice.

32,000 mortgage holders in arrears

More than 32,000 mortgage holders are in arrears with about two-thirds of them unable to meet payments for more than six months, official figures have revealed. The Central Bank said that since the start of the year there has been a 13% increase in the number of homes falling behind in repayments.

Despite the increase, the amount of court actions taken against borrowers in difficulty dropped by 4.8% over the first three months. Just over 3,000 cases, including moves toward repossession, were before the court at the end of March as banks chased arrears of 90 million euro.

In the first three months of the year, lenders took 161 cases to court - a fall of almost a third compared with the last three months of 2009. The Central Bank said mortgages in arrears are worth a total 6.1 billion euro.

The Irish Banking Federation (IBF) said the figures showed banks which agree to postpone loan repayments are greatly assisting distressed homeowners. Pat Farrell, IBF chief executive, said: "It is very reassuring to note that forbearance is working for a great many homeowners.

"IBF mainstream lenders remain committed to doing everything possible to help people with genuine repayment problems to manage their debts and to stay in their homes; and the increasing level of arrears linked to the general economic situation confirms the desirability and indeed the necessity of this approach."

Lenders had 456 repossessed homes on their books at the end of March. Some 91 homes were taken from borrowers in the first three months of the year and 32 were disposed of by mortgage lenders.

The Central Bank said since the start of the year 26 were repossessed following court orders and 65 were voluntarily surrendered or abandoned.

Curb on online income snoopers moves closer

The Swedish parliament's Constitutional Committee has approved a law change that will make it harder to find out other people's incomes online.

The proposal aims to place restrictions on the users of services providing online credit reports on individuals. Those who want credit information this way must have a "legitimate need for information" under the government's Council onLegislation's (Lagråd) changes.

In the future, the person whose information is being sought must also be informed about what has been disclosed. According to Ask, the changes will protect individuals privacy better than current means. One consequence of the law is that it would be harder for journalists to investigate the finances of public figures such as politicians, newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported.

Social Democrat Thomas Bodström, a former justice minister, has been very critical of the proposal. He told Expressen that the new law, by extension, implies "a breeding ground for corruption." "The Moderates do not want to disclose contributions to political parties and now they do not want us to investigate individuals," Bodström told Expressen. "To further limit transparency is deeply unfortunate. There is nothing better than transparency against corruption."

The case will now proceed to the finance committee, which also has a centre-right majority. Sweden's parliament, the Riksdag, will debate and vote on the issue in June. The right-wing majority in the constitutional committee would like to delay the change so that it begins at year-end, instead of as scheduled in August.