At a glance

Clockwork slips up: German postcard arrives after 76 yrs
Hamburg: Germany may be known for its efficiency, but it took 76 years and ten days for a postcard from the northern city of Hamburg to reach Rostock, 150 km to the northeast. The card, dated April 2, 1923, was a niece8217;s message to her widowed aunt in Rostock to say she had arrived safe and well in Hamburg. The coloured card, sent from Hamburg8217;s main rail station, features a picture of Hamburg8217;s Town Hall, a street car, the former bank buildings and the landmark Alster river in the foreground. There was also a 40 Reichsmark stamp on the card. It arrived at the Ernst-Alban-Gesellschaft company in Rostock and project manager Peter Jakubowski thought it was a joke. After investigating, however, it was found out that a woman matching the addressee had actually lived there before she died 40 years ago. No one can explain why the postcard took so long to reach its destination. Jens-Uwe Hogard, spokesman for Rostock8217;s post office, said itcould have been laying around in the old postal offices there and was discovered during recent repair work.

Chinese court sentences Buddha statue thief to death
Beijing: A farmer, who stole and damaged a rare two-tonne statue of Lord Buddha has been sentenced to death, an official report said. Chen Mengxing, from north China8217;s Hebei province was also found guilty of stealing another rare relic from a temple in Shouyang county in Shanxi province, Xinhua news agency said, quoting a verdict handed down by the Beijing no 1 intermediate peoples court on Friday. Chen8217;s accomplices, Liu Xueru and Wang Liqiang, were given life imprisonment. The 165-cm-high stone Buddha statue, Beijing8217;s oldest, dates back to 499 AD and had been kept in a house in a village for the past 1,500 years. Chen and his friends stole the statue on the night of March 25 last year and badly damaged it as they tried to remove it.

Tehran revels in the sound of long-forgotten opera music
Tehran: The German opera trio fromthe opera houses of Berlin and Dusseldorf received a standing ovation after their two-hour concert here on Thursday and had to give three encores before the enthusiastic audience left the Rudaki Music Hall. More than 400 people had come for the one and only public concert and an equal number had to stand outside the sold-out music hall where the trio two men, one woman played pieces by Schubert, Mozart and Verdi. The concert was arranged by the German embassy in Tehran on the occasion of Germany8217;s presidency of the European Union. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Rudaki Music Hall hosted the late conductor Herbert von Karajan, who gave a concert for the former Shah of Iran.