His name is on a monument to victims of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, his family buried his mistakenly identified remains - now a Chilean court is probing how German Cofre has come back from the dead.
Mr Cofre, a former leftist community leader reported to have been whisked away by the military early in General Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship, was not seen again - until he returned to Chile 35 years later from neighbouring Argentina, where he has been living.
Now a judge is looking into how Mr Cofre was erroneously declared dead, how Chilean authorities in Argentina renewed his identity card and how his family was paid a pension because he was on an official list of dictatorship victims.
Mr Cofre, 63, says he didn't know he had been declared one of around 3,000 people who died or disappeared under Gen. Pinochet's rule.
Mr Cofre's wife died in Chile last year. His children, who don't remember him, want answers.
Cannabis 'coffee shops' up in smoke
Almost a fifth of Amsterdam's popular marijuana-selling coffee shops are to be closed because they are too close to schools, the city council has said.
Of the 228 such shops in The Dutch capital, 43 must close by the end of 2011 because they are within 250 metres of a secondary school, the council said. However, the city, home to a quarter of the nation's cannabis coffee shops that are a big draw for tourists, threw its support behind a controversial Dutch policy permitting the sale of "soft drugs".
In addition to marijuana, deemed a soft drug, some shops also sell so-called "magic mushrooms" which have psychedelic properties.
The policy on soft drugs in the Netherlands, one of the most liberal in Europe, allows for the sale of marijuana at coffee shops, which the Dutch have allowed to operate since the 1960s, and possession of less than 5 grams.
General does the hand-grenade waltz
A maverick Thai general who has threatened to bomb anti-government protesters and drop snakes on them from helicopters has been reassigned as an aerobics teacher.
Major-general Khattiya Sawasdipol, a Rambo-esque anti-communist fighter more commonly known as Seh Daeng, reacted with disappointment to his new role as a military instructor promoting public fitness at marketplaces. "It is ridiculous to send me, a warrior, to dance at markets," he said, before launching an attack on his boss, army chief Anupong Paochinda. "The army chief wants me to be a presenter leading aerobics dancers. I have prepared one dance. It's called the 'throwing-a-hand-grenade' dance," he said.
Spiders get their space legs
Spiders flying as an educational project aboard the International Space Station seem to have gotten the hang of weightlessness.
Their first orbital webs were messy, disorganised affairs. But a week into their flight, TV images beamed back to Earth showed surprising progress.
"We noticed the spider made a symmetrical web," space station commander Mike Fincke told ground controllers yesterday. "We're really amazed that the spider could adapt to space so quickly."
School violence hits record high
Cases of violence by Japanese school students have hit a record high, with elementary students increasingly violent, the education ministry said.
The number of cases jumped 18 per cent to nearly 53,000, which some experts have linked to increasing stress among children pushed to excel in their studies and also join a raft of extracurricular activities.
"We heard from school boards that children cannot control their emotions and there is a decline in their moral values as well as the lack of their ability to communicate well," an education ministry official said.
The number of cases involving elementary school children, both at school and elsewhere, jumped 37 per cent to 5,214 incidents in the year to March 2008.
Outback mayor wins sexist award
An Australian outback mayor's plea for lovelorn female "ugly ducklings" to move to a remote mining town to reverse a shortage of eligible women has won him the country's yearly award for outrageous sexism.
Mount Isa Mayor John Malony infuriated women in August with a suggestion that "with five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa".
The annual Ernies' awards have 10 categories and are decided by the level of boos, jeers and stamping of feet at women's-only event held at the New South Wales state parliament in Sydney.
Mr Malony earned his top golden Ernie award with a defence that "The protesters are blaming me for their looks".