■ Iraq
Officer charged in murder
A US Army officer was charged yesterday with murder and conspiracy to commit murder for his role in the shooting dead of a wounded Iraqi in a Baghdad slum, the US military said. "Second Lieutenant Erick Anderson of Company C, 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, has been charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder," a statement said. Anderson had been put under investi-gation over whether he gave two soldiers permission to shoot a man whom they thought was so badly injured he would die anyway.
■ United States
Champ takes on burgers
Japan's Takeru Kobayashi, 26, the undefeated champion in hot-dog eating competi-tions has broadened his repertoire, wowing a US crowd by munching 69 hamburgers in eight minutes. Kobayashi took home US$10,000 after stuf-fing himself at the contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee. "Kobayashi is, without a doubt, the greatest eater ever to live upon planet Earth," said David Baer of the International Federation of Compe-titive Eating. Koba-yashi has won the July 4 hot-dog contest in New York City four years in row, this year breaking his previous record by swallowing 53 and a half frankfurters.
■ United States
Spiritual guru lifts Cessna
Sri Chinmoy, a 73-year-old native of India, has spent three days demonstrating his fitness by lifting three planes, a helicopter, three elephants and a group of Olympic gold medal winners at locations in and around New York City, media reports said. Chinmoy raised platforms off the ground for several seconds bearing weights up to 2,417kg at a time -- including one lift of a twin-engine Cessna plane with seven passengers aboard in Wall, New Jersey. The 1.7m, 84kg man told the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey that it's a matter of mind over matter. "The body has limits, but you can use the mind to control the body," he said.
■ Germany
Nazi victims finally buried
Remains of concentration-camp victims that had been kept for decades in a Berlin museum were interred on Sunday close to the Buchen-wald camp memorial. The cremation urns were lowered into the soil at a bleak cemetery where at least 400 former inmates lie. Mourners laid flowers for the unknown dead. During an inventory several months ago the German History Museum found urns of ashes and fragmented bones from several Nazi concentration camps. The urns were donated to a communist party research department in the late 1940s.
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