It will inevitably result in a book and a film, but the story of Germany's cannibal has already brought a summer chart hit to the country's masters of the macabre: the hard rock band Rammstein. \n"He loves me so much he could eat me. The soft and the hard parts are all on the menu; it's so good with seasoning and flambed," go the not so subtle lyrics of Rammstein's Mein Teil, or My Part. \nArmin Meiwes was jailed in Germany in January for more than eight years for killing and eating a willing victim: both men allegedly tried to eat the man's severed penis before he died. \nThe story of the "cannibal of Rotenburg" was manna from hell for singer, Till Lindemann: "It's so sick that it becomes fascinating and there just has to be a song about it," he said. \nMein Teil took second place in its first week in the charts in Germany after its release in early August, slipping down to sixth place by mid-month. \nThe video clip, which shows the musicians held on a leash by a transvestite and rolling around in mud, has sparked heated debate and is only being aired by music television channel MTV after 11pm. A few other stations have been giving daytime airings. \nBut controversy is not new to Rammstein, which adapted its name from the site of a 1988 air crash in which 70 people died. \nThe six-piece group from Hamburg was formed in 1993, and their fusion of industrial, progressive rock and heavy metal has made them globally popular. \nRammstein's first success came in 1995, with Herzeleid or Heartbreak, but the group's second album Sehnsucht (Nostalgia) two years later made them famous. The disc went platinum in Germany and the US. \nStage shows including firebreathers, explosions and flame throwers have contributed to their notoriety. They have also been known to walk on stage through a giant fake uterus in their underwear. \nIt's a repertoire that has won them fans as far away as Japan and Australia, not to mention their following in Europe. \nBut it has won them few fans among police in the US. Lindemann's musings in his deep, guttural howl and grinding against the group's keyboard player during the song Bueck Dich (Bend Over) earned the two a few hours in custody after a show in Massachusetts. \nThe teenage gunmen in the 1999 Columbine high school massacre that killed 12 people declared that Rammstein was their favorite group. \nThat same year, though, the band won the Echo award in Germany for "best artist abroad" and received a US Grammy nomination. \nFilmmaker David Lynch also included two of their songs on the soundtrack to his Lost Highway. Even Kurt Cobain, the late frontman for the grunge group Nirvana, had described them as a dream band.
Newly married and with his first child on the way, auto worker Wang (王) wanted to move into the apartment he bought in Wuhan three years ago, but those hopes were dashed by China’s ballooning property crisis. Saddled with nearly US$300,000 in debt and with his unit nowhere near completion, the 34-year-old decided he had enough and stopped making mortgage payments. He is among numerous home buyers across dozens of cities in China who have boycotted payments over fears that their properties will not be completed by cash-strapped, debt-laden developers. “They said construction would resume soon,” Wang said, only giving his surname. “But
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‘COMMON THREATS’: In a speech marking the end of Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula, Yoon Suk-yeol said he wants to ‘swiftly ... improve’ relations with Tokyo South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Monday said Japan is a partner as the two countries face “common threats,” offering to improve ties between the allies of the US whose help Washington has sought in putting up a united front against the likes of China, Russia and North Korea. Yoon said in a speech to mark Japan’s World War II surrender and the end of its 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula that he wants to “swiftly and properly improve” relations with Tokyo stemming from historical disputes. “When Korea-Japan relations move toward a common future, and when the mission of
NATIONAL SECURITY PRIORITY: Former US president Donald Trump might have retained nuclear codes after leaving the White House last year, a weapons expert said FBI agents were looking for secret documents about nuclear weapons among other classified material when they searched former US president Donald Trump’s Florida home on Monday, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. The newspaper cited people familiar with the investigation as saying that nuclear weapons documents were thought to be in the trove the FBI was hunting in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. They did not specify what kind of documents, or whether they referred to the US arsenal or another country’s. The report came hours after US Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had personally authorized the US government request for a search
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