Bringing Paris’ ghost stations to life: Swimming pools, bars and even an underground garden centre among subterranean ideas for French capital’s disused Metro stops

Below Paris’ streets, 133 miles of track form one of Europe’s biggest underground Metro systems. But hidden among them are 16 ghost stations that have been abandoned for decades and nearly forgotten.

Some of the ‘fantome stations’ were left vacant after the Nazi occupation and others have never been opened to the public. However, new plans could see them being redesigned as swimming pools, night clubs and restaurants.

The redevelopment was proposed by Paris’ mayoral candidate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. She commissioned the collection of illustrations, drawn up by two architects, which show what Arsenal station may look like after a sprucing up.

Kosciusko-Morizet said the designs were just ‘examples of the field of possibilities’ and, if elected, she will ask Parisians to decide how best to fill the empty platforms.

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A 25-year-old polar bear named Anton has died after eating a visitor’s coat and bag.

The German polar bear died yesterday after eating the bag and jacket, which had been dropped in his enclosure, in the Wilhelma Zoo in Stuttgart.

Anton had been sick for several days before staff saw him coughing up pieces of fabric.

They administered a drug to make him vomit, which was successful in making him produce more pieces of the coat and bag, but it was too late to save him.

The polar bear died of severe internal injuries and inflammation, and could have lived another 10 to 15 years if he had not eaten the garments.
Zoo staff say that visitors dropping objects into enclosures was a serious problem.

They estimate that in the last 20 years, 200 children’s shoes, 50 babies’ dummies, countless hats, cameras and phones, as well as several pairs of glasses have ended up in the water of the polar bear enclosure.

France is crushing more than 3 tons of illegal ivory in Europe’s first destruction of a stockpile of the banned elephant tusks.

Thursday’s pulverization is intended to send a message to poachers and traffickers that preservationists hope will help stem the illicit trade that endangers the species’ survival. Other countries to do the same recently include the United States, Gabon and China, ivory’s biggest market.

The market price of ivory is more than $1,000 a pound ($2,200 per kilogram) and has more than doubled in the past five years, said Ginette Hemley, vice president of species conservation at the World Wildlife Fund. Henley acknowledged that simply destroying seized stocks will not be enough to tamp down demand, which she said has grown exponentially since 2009.

A jewellery thief who kissed his bound-and-gagged hostage on the cheek was caught by the traces of DNA he left behind.

Along with an accomplice, the unnamed 20-year-old had followed the woman, 56, from her jewellers in Paris’s 20th arrondissement to her apartment before bursting in.

They tied her to a chair before pouring what they told her was petrol over her head and threatening to set her on fire if she didn’t help them to rob her shop.

Armed with the codes for the alarm system, one of the thieves then ransacked the shop, stealing cash and jewels.

The other stood guard over the jeweller, identified by the paper only as Anne, for four hours. But before releasing her he made a terrible mistake.

He kissed her on the cheek.

Once freed by her captors, the shop-owner immediately called for police and told them in detail what she had suffered, including the kiss.

The evidence later led them to a man who was detained in the south of France on suspicion of another crime.

The man has said he was just a lookout and that he kissed the jeweller to ‘allay her trauma’. He was remanded in custody while police were still looking for his accomplice, Le Parisien said.

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A group of computer hackers and human rights campaigners in Germany announced Monday that they are suing their government for allegedly breaking the law by aiding foreign spies.

The Chaos Computer Club and the International League for Human Rights submitted a criminal complaint to federal prosecutors claiming that Chancellor Angela Merkel, her government and security officials tolerated and even helped members of the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ to spy on German citizens.

While the German government has expressed misgivings about some of the reported allegations and is seeking to negotiate a ‘no-spy’ agreement with the United States, opposition lawmakers have accused Merkel’s administration of failing to put sufficient pressure on Washington for fear of jeopardizing diplomatic relations and intelligence cooperation.

A distraught husband has described the moment his ‘healthy’ 31-year-old wife died suddenly in his arms as they lay in bed.

Mum-of-two Gemma Sinclair had made a sound similar to gurgling before passing away on July 5 last year, an inquest heard.

Husband Jamie, 33, told coroner Robin Balmain he had initially laughed when he heard the noises his wife was making, thinking she was playing a joke on him.

But she had gone into cardiac arrest and ambulance crews failed to revive her.

Pathologist Dr Smita Deshpande, who carried out a post mortem, said all results from her tests, including toxicology and a microscopic examination of Mrs Sinclair’s heart, had proved negative.

Giving the cause of death as sudden adult death syndrome, Dr Deshpande said: “Unfortunately we cannot pinpoint what the exact cause is.”

Mr Balmain said Mrs Sinclair’s death was ‘desperately sad’ and ruled it was due to natural causes.

Labourer Mr Sinclair told the coroner his wife, a chef at The Greedy Pig cafe in Wednesfield, had woken him just after 6.30am at their home in Victoria Road, Bradmore, Wolverhampton.

Speaking after the case, he told the Birmingham Mail: “She was sitting up in bed, half in and half out, making a weird noise, not quite like a gurgling, and not struggling for breath. It’s hard to describe.

“I’ll never forget, she had her back to me and I was laughing at her, saying ‘what are you making that noise for?’ I was tapping her – I thought she was dreaming. When I leaned round to look at her face, I really woke up. She was still there – it wasn’t like a fit as such. But when I got no response from her I realised it was serious trouble. She died in my arms, basically.”

He told Mr Balmain: “She never screamed out or shouted for help – nothing. It was like something just switched off.”

Mr Sinclair said he and Gemma, a former pupil of Ounsdale High School in Wombourne, had been together since they were teenagers and had a daughter Lauren, now 13, and a son Josh, 11.

After spending years saving for their wedding they finally tied the knot at St Bartholomew’s Church in Penn in August 2012.

Hundreds of mourners attended Gemma’s funeral at Beckminster Methodist Church on July 29 last year.

Mr Sinclair said: “I’ll always remember the vows we said at our wedding. ‘Till death do us part’ was the last one, and the first one to come true.

“I just keep going from day to day, really – the kids are only things that keep me going. I think about Gemma every minute of every day.

“Christmas was devastating. Every programme on the TV and every advert had families hugging. That’s been the most difficult time of the lot so far.

“Gemma was my best friend, everything – my soul mate and my lover.”

Three Afghans who survived the sinking of a migrant boat have described in vivid terms how Greek authorities tried to forcibly tow them back to Turkey.

They said Saturday that the attempt caused their boat to flood and that the Coast Guard did nothing to help those, mostly women and children, who had fallen into the sea and hit at those migrants who attempted to save them.

They claimed survivors never made statements thanking authorities for their rescue, contradicting Greek officials. Some survivors say they lost relatives in the incident, in which 12 are presumed to have perished.