Vienna - Elisabeth Fritzl had to endure 24 years of torment in the dungeon build by her father, where she gave birth to seven children. But her ordeal started much earlier.

1967: Josef Fritzl is convicted of raping a woman and is sentenced to prison.

1977: Fritzl allegedly starts sexually abusing his 11-year-old daughter Elisabeth.

August 28, 1984: Elisabeth disappears and is considered a runaway. But she is being kept and abused in the cellar under the family home in Amstetten from this day.

Mexico City  -

Tokyo  - Japan Friday signalled its plans to participate in the international counter-piracy mission off the coast of Somalia, on the Horn of Africa.

Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada ordered two destroyers to the waters off Somalia, Japan's news agency Kyodo reported.

Each ship is equipped with two helicopters and two speed boats.

The move marks the first time that Japan is sending self defence vessels to participate in such an operation in foreign waters. The destroyers are to be deployed into the Gulf in early April.

Earlier Thursday, European Union defence officials said they had no plans to boost its Somali counter-piracy mission off the Somali coast.

Winnenden, Germany  - The teenager who killed 15 people in a school shooting in Winnenden, south-west Germany might not have revealed his intentions in advance, police said on Thursday.

Earlier, officials had said the youth, identified as Tim Kretschmer, 17, had told another person in an internet chat forum that he planned to kill pupils at his former school because they had made fun of him.

Police said reports that information to this effect was found on his computer turned out to be false. It was not clear why. A police spokesman said there was no such information on the computer.

Vienna  - Germany openly criticized Thursday a new United Nations plan on fighting the global drug problem, saying the document did not specifically mention harm reduction measures for addicts.

"To be frank, the draft political declaration does not fully satisfy us," German Ambassador Ruediger Luedeking told UN member countries at a conference of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna.

Taipei  - A Taiwanese handbag thief who tried to withdraw cash from his victim's bank account was caught in the act by the victim's daughter, who happened to work at the bank branch.

Taipei police said Chang Shih-chun, 55, broke into the house of a retired teacher Tuesday and stole her handbag containing some cash, a bank book and an ink seal used by the victim to stamp her signature when withdrawing money.