Lee Rigby, of 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who had joined the army in 2006, was posted in Cyprus, Afghanistan and Germany before becoming a recruiter, assisting with duties in the Tower of London.

"All he wanted to do from when he was a little boy was be in the Army," Rigby's family said in a statement issued through the Ministry of Defense. "He wanted to live life and enjoy himself."

The family said that Rigby would "do anything for anybody," always looked out for his sisters and took a "big brother" role with everyone he met.

"He was a loving son, husband, father, brother, and uncle, and a friend to many," the statement added.

Rigby, nicknamed Riggers, was an important member of the Corps of Drums who was known for his good nature and wit, as well as his love of his hometown soccer team, fellow soldiers said. Two men believed to have extremist Islamic beliefs are suspected of attacking and killing him.

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It does not seem that Bieber, who has had seven weeks to claim the infant monkey, is likely to do so. Emails from his management to the animal shelter "indicated the singer doesn't want the monkey anymore," reports the AP. "Our contact is the person that the monkey belongs to," said customs office spokesman Thomas Meister. "We've had contact with lots of people, but none of them was an authorized representative."

"If no further documents arrive, then the seizure order comes into effect, and the animal becomes the property of the German state," said Meister.

Regardless of whether he reclaims Mally or not, Bieber also owes thousands of dollars in shelter costs used to care for the capuchin."You can bet we are going to ask for that money back," said Meister.

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Despite the fact that Extreme Sports (or X-treme Sports, if you remember the original boom), are an undeniably global phenomenon, absolutely no one cared. This is surprising, because while the summer headliners -- skateboarding and BMX -- seem distinctly American, you could win an easy bar bet searching for them in any of the three new X Games locales. That is, after all, why they bothered expanded into foreign markets. Yet, somehow, after almost 20 years of the X Games, ESPN, the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports, can’t seem to bring its brand of extreme sports worldwide.

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The play opened last Saturday and according to the Guardian "was expected to be one of the highlights of the celebrations" for the bicentenary of the composer's birth.

From the Guardian:

The opening scene depicts singers inside glass containers dropping to the floor as they are enveloped in a white fog – a clear allusion to the gas chambers that killed millions in Nazi death camps.

Another scene that caused some in the audience to gasp and cover their faces was one in which an entire family had their heads shaved before being shot dead.

In a statement, Rheinoper's managers acknowledged that they had always accepted that the production would be controversial, "but it's with great regret that we now react to the fact that some scenes, in particular the very realistically portrayed shooting scene, caused such strong psychological and physical reactions in some visitors that some of them had to be taken into medical care".

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Stallone, who wrote the original 1976 screenplay, said, “The story of Rocky was very much like my life at the time – starting out with nothing, having to fight for roles and recognition."

He continued: "So I put those feelings into the body of a boxer and I had no idea there were so many millions of people that felt the same way. [Play director] Alex Timbers and the entire creative team have not only honored that original impulse, but have made his story as exciting, heart-breaking, and inspiring as it was when Rocky first went the distance onscreen."

The Hollywood Reporter notes that though official opening dates have not yet been announced, the play will open for previews in February and open with full shows in March.

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Hamburg's state data protection agency said Monday that Google admitted collecting data including emails, passwords, photos and chat protocols from 2008-2010 as it prepared to launch its Street View service. Google says it never intended to store personal data and the agency says it has been deleted.

Agency head Johannes Caspar says "company internal control mechanisms failed seriously" at Google but the maximum fine possible was 150,000 euros which was "unlikely...to have a deterring effect." Google earned $3.3 billion in the first quarter.

Caspar urged dramatic increases to possible maximum fines under future European regulations.

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Confused? I can explain. The Romeike family aren’t just any immigrants. They are evangelical Christians from Germany. And, oh yeah, they’re white.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are devout Christians who want to home-school their five children. But under German law, attendance at an officially recognized school — whether a public school or a private religious or secular school — is mandatory. Facing over $10,000 in mounting fines and police escorting their children to school daily, the Romeikes were contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association — which was looking to expand its work internationally --  and suggested the Romeike’s resettle in Morristown, Tenn., and apply for political asylum.

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The 220-pound (100-kilogram) bomb was found Tuesday evening at a building site near the station, which stands in a relatively sparsely populated area near what used to be the border between West and East Berlin.

Experts decided to defuse the Soviet bomb on the spot, a former freight depot. They evacuated people from a few dozen nearby buildings and diverted trains heading north toward Hamburg. Most trains, however, were able to continue running undisrupted.

As a precaution, authorities also decided briefly to stop planes landing at the city's Tegel airport, a few miles away, while the bomb was defused — an operation that took half an hour. It wasn't immediately clear how many flights were delayed.

Some 150 people who lived nearby waited at a nearby school while the bomb was defused, police spokesman Jens Berger said.

Allied airplanes dropped huge quantities of ordnance on Germany during World War II in an effort to cripple the Nazi war machine.

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Bieber's pet monkey was quarantined five days ago at a German airport after the singer failed to produce the relevant paperwork necessary to board a plane with the pet. Mally is still stuck in a Munich animal sanctuary while Bieber tours across Europe.

It turns out that Mally, who has replaced Bieber with a "toy cat," is doing just so-so:

From Der Spiegel:

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Construction of Christo’s “Big Air Package” at the Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany. February 2013. (Unless indicated, all photographs by Wolfgang Volz & courtesy of Christo.)

Christo’s latest project, an awe-inspiring installation in an industrial relic in Germany, looks more like a captured dirigible than much of the previous fabric-based work he’s created with his late wife Jeanne-Claude. In fact, a balloon-building company was involved in engineering the “Big Air Package,” a towering installation recently constructed in the Gasometer in Oberhausen, Germany.

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Over more than 87 miles and 25 years, the wall divided Berlin between East and West, standing as a symbol of division and tension, an almost impossible hurdle to millions of immigrants and political refugees. After its fall, the government of East Germany sold pieces of it to people and entities across the globe; these particular slabs were purchased by Jerry Speyer, of NYC developer Tischman Speyer, and installed on East 53rd Street in 1990 for the enjoyment of the public. In their new context, however, they’ve lost almost all of their political meaning and significance, particularly on a cold Sunday afternoon when I’m the only visitor. They stand impotently dividing nothing, demarcating no place. Context is what gives architecture power, and in 2013 New York, old Berlin means nothing.

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An Amazon spokeswoman in Germany, Ulrike Stoecker, said Monday the online retailer has ended its relationship with Hensel European Security Services "with immediate effect."

A documentary shown on ARD public television last week showed staff of the security company – whose initials spell out the name of Adolf Hitler's deputy Hess – wearing clothes linked to Germany's neo-Nazi scene. It interviewed people claiming they were mistreated by the staff.

Stoecker told The Associated Press that Amazon has a "zero tolerance limit for discrimination and intimidation and expects the same of other companies it works with."

The company, hired by one of Amazon's subcontractor, last week denied it supported far-right opinions.

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The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that one member of a civil partnership should be able to adopt the partner's stepchild or adopted child. Until now, they could only adopt a partner's biological child.

Germany has allowed same-sex couples to register civil partnerships that legally fall short of formal marriage since 2001. Unlike many other European countries, including Spain, the Netherlands and, most recently, France and Britain, it hasn't moved toward allowing full gay marriage.

The court ruled on a challenge to the existing rules from a woman who was denied permission to adopt a Bulgarian girl whom her partner had adopted. It ordered the government to draw up new legislation by June 2014.

It said the German constitutional provision that "marriage and the family shall enjoy the special protection of the state," cannot be used to justify ruling out same-sex partners adopting the other partner's adopted child.

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There's a little restaurant in Innsbruck, Austria, that does a peppery foal goulash. Horse burgers are a popular street food in Slovenia and in the hills south of Rome, they snack on dried horsemeat flavored with chili and fennel. A weakness for juicy equine steaks earned inhabitants of the Belgian city of Vilvoorde their nickname pjeirefretters — horse gluttons.

"Horsemeat is part of our culinary heritage, like snails and frogs legs and we're very proud of it," says Eric Vigoureux, president of the FrenchAssociation of Hippophagist Butchers.

These days however, Europeans risk becoming hippophagists (horse eaters) by accident, thanks to the widening spiral of revelations that’s uncovered horsemeat in pre-packaged products labeled as beef — from Irish burgers to frozen lasagne in Germany and British bolognese sauce.

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Via the Independent:

The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the program-makers said.

Aspects of the guards' attire and the company's name carried neo-Nazi allusions, the Independent noted, and the firm's director is believed to associate with far-right groups:

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For academy purposes “Lore” is classified as an Australian film, and it certainly propels previously obscure Aussie director Cate Shortland onto the global-cinema map, but it was made entirely in Germany, and the only fragments of English you’ll hear come from American soldiers. You may be thinking you don’t have the emotional and psychological space for yet another movie about childhood in wartime or the legacy of the Holocaust, but I promise you that “Lore” offers a vision of the costs of war at an individual level, along with a challenging moral parable, that’s not like anything you’ve seen before. In its ruthless detail and its unsentimental violence, “Lore” is certainly reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist,” and the story it tells is just as chilling in a different direction.

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The man who goes by "Thomas Kuban" must at all costs keep his identity a secret — after all, Europe's neo-Nazis would kill to get their hands on him.

For 15 years, Kuban, now in his mid thirties, risked his life secretly filming neo-Nazi rock concerts, events he says are the conspiratorial heart of Europe's diverse and burgeoning neo-Nazi scene.

His camera rolling, Kuban has witnessed hundreds of fanatics venerating the perpetrators of Auschwitz and calling for Jews and foreigners to be murdered. He has watched dumbfounded as crowds of thousands raise their hands in the Hitler salute shouting, “Sieg Heil,” or as Austrian police shook hands with neo-Nazis.

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