TV reporter found murdered in US

A male model who had lately been a contender on a Portuguese reality TV show was taken into police custody hours after his companion, a superstar Portuguese television journalist, was found castrated and bludgeoned to death in a New York City hotel.

The journalist, 64-year-old Carlos Castro, had arrived in the US in late December in the company of his young boyfriend, the model Renato Seabra, to see some Broadway shows and spend New Year's Eve in Times Square, according to a family friend.

There had been some friction between the two men toward the end of the journey, but nothing to propose that anything was about to happen, said the friend, Luis Pires, the editor of the Portuguese language newspaper Luso-Americano. The couple saw the musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" and took in the movie "The Black Swan." But when it was time to meet Pires' daughter for dinner Friday night, Seabra rapidly emerged in the lobby of the InterContinental New York Times Square hotel acting oddly, Pires said.