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Friday July 11, 2008

Shorts: World

Berlin museum to fix beheaded wax Hitler

Madame Tussauds said it will repair the wax figure of Adolf Hitler beheaded last week by a visitor and return it to its new Berlin museum.

The visitor pushed aside two museum employees, one of whom was guarding the display, to get to the figure and rip off its head on the new branch’s opening day July 5.

The presence of the Nazi dictator’s likeness in the new museum has led to criticism in recent weeks. — ap

Russian cemetery vandals given prison sentences

A Russian judge sent three of four teenagers who vandalized a Jewish cemetery in Siberia to prison.

At the sentencing earlier this month, the teens were handed prison sentences of 2 to 2 1/2 years, according to the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Cemetery vandals in Russia typically are charged with hooliganism, but the teens were convicted on the more serious charge of “damaging a cemetery motivated by ethnic hatred.” Authorities said they were drunk when they damaged 61 gravestones in Krasnoyarsk last October. — jta

German government co-funded offensive conference

The German government confirmed that it co-funded a conference where a former Iranian foreign minister said the “Zionist project” should be canceled.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Plotner said three ministries and the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel supported the Third Transatlantic Conference held last month by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt.

The Central Council of Jews said the government’s failure to respond to Mohammad Javad Ardashir Larijani’s remarks raised questions about the depth of German solidarity with Israel. — jta

Mayor of Dachau looking to find sister city in Israel

Mayor Peter Bürgel said Dachau is seeking a new image by finding a sister city in Israel, according to a recent interview with the Welt am Sonntag weekly newspaper.

Bürgel said he has not begun formal talks with any Israeli municipal governments.

Dachau is the site of one of Hitler’s first concentration camps. The German city already has two international relationships, including one with Klagenfurt, capital of the Austrian state of Carinthia, whose governor is the far-right politician Jörg Haider. — jta

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