BERLIN (Reuters) – A small German village community left in the lurch after their local doctor retired in September has pulled together to try and attract a new GP — by offering free bread, meat, flowers, haircuts and accommodation.

Niko Ringhoff, who runs the butcher’s shop in the northwestern village of Lette, is offering a doctor willing to move to the 2,200-strong community free meaty lunches and a complimentary sausage-themed feast when the new surgery opens.

“Everybody wants to do something to help get a doctor,” he told Reuters on Tuesday. “We all want to give him a warm welcome and make sure he feels at home here. We desperately need a doctor, but it’s difficult to attract one to the countryside.”

Marion Funke, who runs the local hotel with her husband, is offering a doctor a place to stay for free until he or she finds permanent accommodation.

Other services with which the community hopes to entice a doctor include haircuts on the house at the local salon, complimentary bread rolls from the local baker and free flower arrangements for the surgery from the local florist.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin)

SWIEBODZIN, Poland (Reuters Life!) – A statue of Jesus Christ that its builders say will be the largest in the world is fast rising from a Polish cabbage field and local officials hope it will become a beacon for tourists.

The builders expect to attach the arms, head and crown to the robed torso in coming days, weather and cranes permitting, completing a project conceived by local Catholic priest Sylwester Zawadzki and paid for by private donations.

Standing on an artificial mound, the plaster and fibre glass statue will stand some 52 metres (57 yards) when completed, taller than the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms that gazes over Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Polish officials say.

The actual statue will measure 33 metres — Zawadzki has said this reflects the fact that Jesus died at 33, according to Christian tradition — and weigh 440 tonnes.

“I’m happy because this project will bring publicity to our town, not only in Poland but also from the global media. Other countries are showing a lot of interest,” said Dariusz Bekisz, mayor of Swiebodzin, a town of about 21,000 people in western Poland some 100 km (60 miles) from the German border.

“More people will visit Swiebodzin and leave their money. Some will come for spiritual reasons, others out of curiosity,” he said, adding no public money had been used in the project.

“The priest, Father Zawadzki, is a man of action who always, throughout his life, has built and created… In the future we’re going to have to think about bringing the carnival to Swiebodzin too, just as in Rio,” he joked.

SCEPTICISM

Zawadzki is avoiding media for the time-being and Polish church leaders could not immediately be reached for comment. But the editor of Poland’s Catholic Information Agency (KAI) sounded a sceptical note.

“Everybody has a right to do what they want. Swiebodzin’s Jesus project doesn’t touch my religious sensitivity. These kinds of monuments don’t have much to do with spirituality,” editor Tomasz Krolak said.

“People should think more about building within themselves rather than making big monuments.”

Local townspeople seemed bemused by the whole affair.

“Building Jesus is an interesting idea, but I’m afraid we can’t beat Rio. I don’t treat this 100 percent seriously,” said local resident Piotr Pinio.

Others thought the money could have been put to better use.

“There are far more important aims to which we could put the money — sick children, for example, orphanages, old people. Do we really have to build a big Jesus statue to make people believe,” said Mieczyslawa Hundert.

Poland remains one of the most religiously observant cou

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The eastern Dutch city of Nijmegen is taking 10 statues off the streets after some of its bronzes were stolen and most likely melted down to take advantage of the high price of the metal alloy.

Among the statues to be removed for safe-keeping is “Mariken van Nieumeghen” — or Mariken from Nijmegen — which refers to a local character in one of the Netherlands’ earliest books, written around the year 1500.

The city plans to protect the statues by implanting a GPS chip or may replace them with copies made from cheaper materials.

(Reporting by Marcel Michelson; Editing by Sara Webb)

SEOUL (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron joked on Thursday that getting away from home for the G20 summit would allow him to catch up on his sleep after the birth of his baby daughter.

“Everyone else has come to Korea for a summit or a business meeting. I’ve come just for a good night’s sleep,” Cameron told delegates at a business summit.

Cameron and his wife Samantha had a daughter, Florence, in August and also have two other young children.

Cameron is on a gruelling five-day trip which began with an overnight flight from London and a 36-hour visit to China.

The prime minister, who has a quick wit, earlier joked that he was spending more time at the summit promoting England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup than he was on core G20 issues.

MIAMI (Reuters) – A Florida woman was charged with trying to sell her infant son in order to pay for a new car, police said Tuesday.

The baby’s grandmother brokered the deal and initially demanded $75,000 but agreed to cut the price to $30,000 when told the prospective buyer could not get a bank loan, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said.

The mother of the eight-week-old boy, Stephanie Bigbee Fleming, 22, of Bradenton, Florida, was to receive $9,000 of the proceeds, the FDLE said.

“Fleming planned to purchase a new vehicle from the money received,” an FDLE spokeswoman said.

Fleming also needed money to pay court costs for an unrelated probation violation, the arrest documents said.

Fleming was arrested Tuesday. The grandmother, Patty Bigbee, 45, was arrested last week with her boyfriend Lawrence Works, 42, both of Holly Hill, Florida. All three were charged with the illegal sale of a child, and Bigbee was also charged with communications fraud, the department said.

The arrest report said Bigbee offered to sell the baby to a female relative in October, explaining she had been caring for her grandchild but “was not mother material.”

The relative alerted police and worked with them during the negotiations. Bigbee and Works were arrested when they collected a $30,000 cashier’s check and handed over the baby to an undercover agent in a Daytona Beach parking lot, police said.

The baby remains in state custody.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by Cynthia Otserman)

MIAMI (Reuters) – A Florida woman was charged with trying to sell her infant son in order to pay for a new car, police said on Tuesday.

The baby’s grandmother brokered the deal and initially demanded $75,000 (47,000 pounds) but agreed to cut the price to $30,000 when told the prospective buyer could not get a bank loan, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said.

The mother of the eight-week-old boy, Stephanie Bigbee Fleming, 22, of Bradenton, Florida, was to receive $9,000 of the proceeds, the FDLE said.

“Fleming planned to purchase a new vehicle from the money received,” an FDLE spokeswoman said.

Fleming also needed money to pay court costs for an unrelated probation violation, the arrest documents said.

Fleming was arrested on Tuesday. The grandmother, Patty Bigbee, 45, was arrested last week with her boyfriend Lawrence Works, 42, both of Holly Hill, Florida. All three were charged with the illegal sale of a child, and Bigbee was also charged with communications fraud, the department said.

The arrest report said Bigbee offered to sell the baby to a female relative in October, explaining she had been caring for her grandchild but “was not mother material.”

The relative alerted police and worked with them during the negotiations. Bigbee and Works were arrested when they collected a $30,000 cashier’s check and handed over the baby to an undercover agent in a Daytona Beach parking lot, police said.

The baby remains in state custody.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by Cynthia Otserman)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Reuters) – Coffee lovers looking for a bit of sea air flavor in their espresso or Frappuccino might want to sample the first Starbucks at sea, which steamed into a Florida port on Thursday on board the world’s largest cruise liner.

Seattle-based Starbucks Corp, the world famous coffee chain, already has a nautical link — its founders took the name from Starbuck, the first mate on the Pequod whaler from Nantucket that hunted the white whale, Moby Dick, in Herman Melville’s famous novel.

The floating Starbucks Cafe is among a panoply of dining and entertainment options offered aboard Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, sister of the Oasis of the Seas, hitherto the world’s biggest cruise ship which the company brought into operation last year.

Royal Caribbean executives say the Allure is almost 2 inches (50 millimeters) longer than the Oasis.

The Starbucks at sea is being operated under a license between the world’s largest coffee maker and Royal Caribbean, which will run the Allure and the Oasis from its Port Everglades base on Florida’s southeast coast.

“Starbucks is an example of something that people, when they move from their daily world to the world of vacation, they don’t necessarily want to leave that behind,” Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Adam Goldstein told CNN this week.

Like its sister ship Oasis, the 225,285-gross ton Allure has 16 decks. It carries 5,400 guests at double occupancy, and features 2,700 staterooms.

The ship offers seven distinct themed “neighborhoods”, which include a tree-lined Central Park, Boardwalk, the Royal Promenade, the Pool and Sports Zone, Vitality at Sea Spa and Fitness Center, Entertainment Place and Youth Zone.

Allure will operate in the Caribbean and a special four-night sailing of the luxury liner on December 1 will call at the cruise line’s private beach destination of Labadee, on the north coast of Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

(Reporting by Joe Skipper, Pascal Fletcher and Tom Brown; Editing by Anthony Boadle)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – One of Russia’s most notorious prisons will soon install sunbeds to improve the health of its inmates, its head said on Tuesday.

Styled as a brick fortress, the 19th century Butyrka prison in central Moscow has held a slew of notable figures behind its bars, from persecuted Soviet-era writers Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Isaak Babel to Adolf Hitler’s nephew Heinrich.

“We are developing additional medical services … and even sunbeds will be put in place,” Butyrka’s head Sergei Telyatnikov told state-run radio station Vesti FM.

The sunbeds, which Telyatnikov said would be used for medical purposes, will be installed by the end of the year, the state-run RIA news agency said.

Russia’s crowded, poorly managed prison system came under increased scrutiny after the November 2009 death of jailed lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who spent much of the last months of his life in Butyrka.

Lawyers for the 37-year-old, who was an adviser to Hermitage, once the biggest equity investment fund in Russia, said he was kept in custody illegally and not given proper medical treatment in prison despite repeated requests.

In an unusual admission, the Federal Prison Service said it was partly responsible for Magnitsky’s death.

Earlier this year, the prison service said almost half of Russia’s inmates are ill, many infected with HIV or with tuberculosis. It blamed outdated medical equipment for disease and health problems.

Telyatnikov said inmates will also have access to ultrasound systems to “check up on their health,” and could even have spa facilities such as mud baths in the future.

Supporters of Magnitsky say Butyrka lacked ultrasound equipment he needed when he was there.

Telyatnikov added that inmates will also be allowed to use Skype, which offers relatively cheap voice and video calls over the Internet, to contact their relatives.

(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman, editing by Paul Casciato)

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German judge has shot to popularity after letting 42 speeding drivers off without charges in the last week because he thinks speed controls merely serve to fill the state’s coffers rather than prevent accidents.

Bernd Kahre, spokesman for Herford court in northwestern Germany where judge Helmut Knoener works, told Reuters the 62-year-old wanted to make a stand against the current practice of prosecuting speeders.

He said Knoener believed speed controls were not conducted to ensure greater road safety, but rather to provide the cash-strapped state with an additional source of income.

Knoener sees no legal justification for using photos in speeding-related court cases and is calling for clearer regulations about how, when and where speed controls can be conducted.

But the speeders who think they’ve got off scot free may be in for a shock yet — the Public Prosecution Service can still appeal the sentences, Kahre said.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, editing by Paul Casciato)