PETA Calls For Knut To Be Castrated

An animal rights group in Germany came under fire for saying that Berlin’s celebrity polar bear Knut should be castrated because he is related to his love interest Giovanna.

The PETA animal rights group warned that breeding between Knut and Giovanna, who was moved to Berlin from Munich last year, would carry the risk of depression amongst offspring because both bears have the same grandfather.

Frank Albrecht, zoo expert for PETA Germany, said the organisation wanted to provoke Knut fans that have pressured Berlin Zoo officials to keep the couple together by saying Knut should be castrated.

“Fans have to accept the fact that Knut just has to be castrated and then there’s nothing wrong with the couple staying together,” Albrecht told Reuters.

Today’s Top Eurotastic Song By Roger Cicero

Imagine yourself in a Berlin lounge in the 1920′s enjoying  Frauen regier’n die Welt by Germany’s very own Roger Cicero:

Berlin Holocaust Memorial Site Of Fashion Photos

British low-cost airline easyJet has apologized after fashion photographs shot at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin were published in its in-flight magazine.

In the pictures, models posed among the concrete blocks of the “Field of Stelae”.

EasyJet said it “profusely apologizes” to anyone who was offended by the “inappropriate” shoot and said it would withdraw this month’s issue from all flights.

“The magazine is produced by INK, an external publishing house, and easyJet were not aware of the images until they appeared in print,” the UK’s largest airline said.

“As a consequence we are now reviewing our relationship with the publisher and are withdrawing this month’s issue from all flights,” easyJet went on to say.

“EasyJet prides itself on bringing together a wide range of cultures and beliefs and is appalled by this insensitive and inconsiderate photoshoot,” the airline’s statement concluded.

The memorial to the Holocaust’s six million Jewish victims consists of a field of 2,700 gray slabs situated close to the capital’s Brandenburg Gate. It opened to the public in 2005 and is freely accessible around the clock.

According to the report, INK did not seek permission from the Foundation for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe to shoot the pictures.

EasyJet launched a weekly schedule of six daily flights between London and Tel Aviv earlier in November.

Who Built The Berlin Wall? Don’t Ask A Russian

More than half of all Russians do not know who built the Berlin Wall, one of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War, an opinion poll showed.

Ten percent of people surveyed by pollster VTsIOM thought Berlin residents built it themselves — even though its purpose was to prevent residents of communist East Germany from escaping to the West through the divided city of Berlin.

Six percent said Western powers built it and four percent though it was a “bilateral initiative” of the Soviet Union and the West.

Fifty-eight percent said they did not know who built it, with just 24 percent correctly naming the Soviet Union and its then-communist ally East Germany.

Following mounting pressure from within the communist bloc, the wall was opened to allow people to cross from east to west on November 9, 1989, leading to the reunification of Germany 11 months later.

East German Nudists Still Let It All Hang Out

“It has nothing to do with sex,” insisted Udo Schumacher, 64, as he stood, stark naked, on a beautiful but bracing beach in Prerow in what was once communist East Germany.

“If you go in and experience how lovely it is to swim with a naked body, and come out without wet trunks on, you feel healthy. And if you can get over the fact that you are naked, it is great,” he told AFP back in August.

“Freikoerperkultur” (“Free body culture”), or “FKK” for short, was hugely popular in the otherwise highly restrictive German Democratic Republic (GDR), much more so than in West Germany.

And 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall this November 9, the habit is still going strong, and has even attracted a loyal band of followers from what was West Germany to the beaches of the east.

With life so tightly controlled in other ways — no freedom of speech, little freedom to travel, the Stasi secret police spying on citizens — FKK was a rare liberty that people made full use of in the GDR.

Nowhere was this more evident than in Prerow, a picturesque seaside town 300 kilometres (190 miles) north of Berlin, with its long, pristine beaches, sand dunes and crystal-clear, if chilly, water.

In GDR times, 2,500 border guards, 70 watch towers, searchlights, barbed wire, boats and radar all made sure no one escaped by sea to West Germany or to Denmark, Doris Pegel, 53, curator of the local museum, told AFP.

Sailing and even surfing were off limits. But one thing people were allowed to do in the shadow of Prerow’s watchtowers, and on other beaches and lakes around the communist country, was to indulge in FKK.

And indulge they did, in huge numbers, as people flocked to the seaside in summer and gave FKK a try. In Prerow, for example, nudists created one of the GDR’s first nudist campsites, where demand for pitches was massive.

German Only Please!

Guido Westerwelle, who is widely expected to become foreign minister in the next German government, admonished a reporter who asked him a question in English, saying: “We’re in Germany here.”

The head of the Free Democrats (FDP), who are poised to enter government in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, was giving his first news conference since Sunday’s election when a BBC reporter asked whether he might be willing to respond to a question in English.

“Would you please be so kind, this is a press conference in Germany,” Westerwelle replied in German.

Undeterred, the reporter then asked Westerwelle if he could respond in German to a question in English, only to be rebuffed again.

“In Great Britain people are expected to speak English and it is the same in Germany, people are expected to speak German,” Westerwelle answered.

Using a translator, the BBC reporter then proceeded to ask a question about how German foreign policy would change with Westerwelle as foreign minister.

Westerwelle dodged the question, before adding: “Just so it’s clear, I’m happy to meet you for tea outside the press conference and then we can speak only English. But we’re in Germany here.”

Some Germans Want The Berlin Wall Back

One in seven Germans want the Berlin Wall back because they were better off when the country was divided, according to an opinion poll published ahead of the 20th anniversary of its collapse on November 9, 1989.

The survey of 1,002 Germans by the Forsa institute published in Stern magazine said 15 percent of the country’s 82 million long for the days when there were two Germanys. Some 16 percent pining for the Wall were westerners and 10 percent easterners.

The survey found that many westerners are bitter about higher taxes to pay for rebuilding the formerly communist east, where some 1.2 trillion euros ($1,762 billion) worth of state funds has been transferred in the last 20 years.

Eastern Germans are unhappy about income levels that are on average only 80 percent of western levels and that due to higher unemployment depopulation is decimating parts of the east, where the population has declined by about two million since 1990.

The poll found 55 percent of Germans believe unification could be helped if a “solidarity tax” to help fund the costs of rebuilding were abolished while 50 percent believe higher pensions for easterners would help ease east-west tensions.

Pedro The Chimp Bites Off Finger That Feeds Him

The director of the Berlin Zoo made famous by the polar bear cub Knut has had his finger bitten off by a chimpanzee called Pedro.

Bernhard Blaszkiewitz, 55, was feeding Pedro walnuts as he showed a visitor round the zoo when the ape grabbed his hand and bit off his right index finger.

“Pedro is the boss of the group so he has to demonstrate a certain dominance in it to prove himself,” zoo spokesman Andre Schuele said. “Under normal circumstances, a chimp would never have the chance to reach a keeper or our director.”

Doctors sewed Blaszkiewitz’s finger back on but said it was not clear if the operation would be successful.

Schuele said the incident would have no repercussions for the 28-year-old Pedro.

Woman Beaten Up Over High Asparagus Prices

German police are searching for a motorist who beat a 24-year-old woman selling white asparagus because he was upset about her asking price for the coveted springtime vegetable.

The prices for white asparagus, sometimes called “edible ivory” in Germany, fluctuate wildly during the short springtime season, peaking early in the season at 10 euros per kilo.

The man screamed at the woman that her asparagus was overpriced. He then punched her in the face and threatened to unleash his attack dog at her. She fled and called police.

“The motorist said her prices were totally over the top,” said Dietmar Keck, police spokesman in the Havelland district west of Berlin, without saying how much she was asking.

Prices for asparagus now range from 1 to 5 euros per kilo, he said. Some 55,000 tons valued at 175 million euros are harvested annually.

Man Fined For Beheading Hitler

A German court fined an unemployed man 900 euros ($1,227) for knocking the head off a waxwork figure of Adolf Hitler in a Berlin museum.

Minutes after the Madame Tussauds museum opened in the German capital in July, the 42-year-old pushed past security staff ripped off its head. The man, an ex-policeman, said he found it inappropriate to display an exhibit showing the Nazi leader only some 500 meters from Berlin’s Holocaust memorial.

The waxwork of a glum-looking Hitler in a mock bunker stirred debate in Germany even before it went on display. Critics argued it was tasteless to display a replica of the man who unleashed World War Two and ordered the extermination of Europe’s Jews.

Madame Tussauds said the museum avoided politics, arguing Hitler stood for a significant part of German history and his waxwork therefore had a legitimate part in the exhibition.

The restored figure was returned to the museum in September and is now displayed behind a glass wall.