The week at a glance...Europe

Chelmsford, U.K.

Authorities seize unborn child: A pregnant Italian woman who experienced a manic episode during a trip to Britain last year had her baby forcibly taken from her by caesarean section six weeks early and placed into foster care. Essex County social services said it feared the bipolar woman would harm the unborn child, and it got a secret court to rule her incapacitated. The woman has now fully recovered back in Italy, but authorities refuse to return her daughter, now 15 months old, and say they intend to allow a British couple to adopt the girl. “I think this has a fair chance of being the worst case of human-rights abuse I’ve ever seen,” said John Hemming, a member of Parliament. “She wasn’t treated as a human being.”

Paris

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Dylan insults Croats: Bob Dylan may be charged with inciting racial hatred in France because of a remark equating Croats to Nazis. “If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that,” Dylan said in an interview with the French edition of Rolling Stone last year. “Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.” A fascist Croatian regime collaborated with Nazis during World War II, and a few Croats were responsible for atrocities in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s; it’s unclear which era Dylan meant. The group that brought the legal action said it wants the legendary singer to apologize for conflating all Croats with war criminals.

Dresden, Germany

Cannibalism for kicks: A German police officer has confessed to murdering a businessman who had a sexual fantasy of being killed and eaten. The officer, 55, identified as Detlev G., said he met his victim in an Internet chat room billed as “the No. 1 website for exotic meat,” where those who want to be cannibalized meet those who want to do it to them. He says he didn’t actually eat the man, 59, but police suspect he did and are searching for any remains at the murder site in a remote cabin outside Dresden. It’s the second recent case of German cannibalism: In 2001, Armin Meiwes killed and ate Bernd Brandes, whom he met in a similar online forum.

Riga, Latvia

Government falls: Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis surprised his country last week by resigning after a supermarket roof caved in. Around 100 people were in the Maxima store, and 54 were crushed to death. It was the worst peacetime disaster since the former Soviet republic regained its independence in 1991. An investigation revealed no governmental culpability, and nobody had called for Dombrovskis to step down, but he said he felt “political and moral responsibility.” Gintaras Jasinskas, chairman of Maxima Latvia, refused to follow suit, saying, “It is those who feel guilty who resign.” The company’s chief executive fired Jasinskas this week, citing “his unacceptably expressed opinion at this painful and difficult time for Latvia.”