27. 01. 12. - 13:00

• more Germany in Focus news
• RSS Feed Germany in Focus

27. 01. 12. - 13:00

Inshredible

A new computer scanner which can reconstruct shredded documents is being used to restore thousands of confidential dossiers destroyed by East Germany's feared Stasi secret police in the dying days of Communism.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute in Munich have developed a computer program that can sift thousands of torn and shredded fragments to match complete pages.

A 8 million GBP test phase - which will reconstruct more than 30 million shreds of paper - is expected to be be complete by the summer.

As the East German communist government collapsed, secret police tried to destroy millions of top secret documents and spy reports detailing decades of snooping on its citizens and foreign visitors.

Since 1995 a team of researchers has been trying to painstakingly restore by hand nearly 16,000 bags containing more than a billion shreds and pieces of torn paper.

"There is real political will out there to get this done," said research head Bertram Nikolay.

German Herald

Silly Moos
Police asked callers to pull the udder one - when they rang in to report a cow waiting for a train in Steinfurt, Germany.

Copycat UK Rhino Horn Thieves
A gang who tried to steal valuable rhino horns from a British museum are suspected of pulling off a similar raid in Germany just days earlier.

Porn Film Flyer
German Philipp Schultz, 37, was badly hurt after forgetting he had taken down his trousers while watching a porn film at a cinema in the Hamburg red light district and toppling head first into the row in front when he went to leave.

Home Made Heli Death
Hobby pilot Gustel Schmidt, 61, was burned to death after he crashed a helicopter he had made himself during a flight near Stuttgart, Germany.

Monks Brew-ha-ha
An order of beer-making monks have won a legal brew-ha-ha with a local dairy over just who has the right to name their products after the town.

Policemans Bull
A runaway bullock has given a team of 12 policemen and hunters the slip after it broke out of its enclosure in Neuss, Germany, and fled into surrounding woodland.

Dignitas: Suicide Numbers Up
Suicide group Dignitas has revealed a 35 per cent increase in the number of people it helped to kill themselves last year.

Moo-ve Along
Traffic stopped moo-ving on a busy road in Feuchtwangen in Germany after 31 cows escaped after the lorry they were being transported in skidded and crashed off the road.

Mum Killer
Mentally ill German woman Marcela Rainer, 34, stabbed her 8-year-old son to death as he slept in the middle of the night at the family home and then calmly walked down the road to a petrol station where she called police to tell them what she had done.

Skull And Lost Bones
Charges have been filed against three men who allegedly stole the skull of a pirate dubbed Germany's answer to Robin Hood because he stole from the wealthy merchants of the time and freely distributed the money to the poor.