After four years as a member of St Petersburg’s legislative assembly, Sergei Gulyaev is packing up. Boxes, files and a 2007 calendar showing him in a moody leather jacket — all were being carted out of his office. Last month Gulyaev failed to win re-election to the city’s assembly. The vote, in 14 regions across Russia, was a rehearsal for December’s parliamentary elections.
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/ 5 February 2007
The former president of the European Court of Human Rights this week claimed he was poisoned during a visit to Russia in late October — three days before the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned in London. Luzius Wildhaber, who retired last month as Europe’s most senior judge, told a Swiss newspaper that he had fallen violently ill after a three-day trip to Moscow.
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/ 4 September 2006
Early last month, thousands of demonstrators attended a rally in Berlin to show support for Israel. Germany’s Jewish community was there, of course. There were also members of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party. But as well as politicians in suits, another group had turned up to express their enthusiasm for Israel’s attack on Lebanon — the Anti-Germans.
It has soft lights, gleaming red and blue surfaces and a soothing video projection on the wall showing swirling underwater bubbles. Welcome not to an art hotel, but to Europe’s trendiest public toilet. The super-loo, which opened in Berlin on May 4, is the last word in chic public architecture.
It has been acclaimed as the best German film of the year and nominated in 11 out of 15 categories for the German Prize, Germany’s version of the Oscars. But The Life of Others, a film about the Stasi, East Germany’s ubiquitous secret police, is at the centre of a row after its lead actor […]
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/ 17 October 2005
After weeks of rumour and intrigue Germany finally got what everyone had expected on Monday — a grand coalition led by Angela Merkel. But as the week progressed there were growing doubts about how long such a coalition would last and what, if anything, it would achieve.
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/ 21 September 2005
Beneath the elegant art deco facades of the Gansemarkt shopping centre in Hamburg, several hundred people have turned up to hear Angela Merkel. As techno music bursts through the speakers, a woman in a blue trouser suit threads her way to the main stage through a sea of orange banners. A voice booms: ”Here is Germany’s next chancellor, Angela Merkel.”
Germany’s conservative leader, Angela Merkel, recently presented her campaign team for next month’s general election, shrugging off remarks by a colleague who had described east German voters as ”frustrated cows”. Merkel, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats, introduced nine members of her team who are likely to play leading roles in any Merkel-led Cabinet.
The leaders of eight of the world’s wealthiest countries are capable of delivering justice for Africa. We take a look at their differenty agendas and also look at the domestic pressures that each of them in carrying out these agendas.
Luke Harding samples five-star luxury in Berchtesgaden, a place that became famous for all the wrong reasons. ”Enchanted by the Alpine scenery, Hitler first came here in 1925. In 1933, shortly after the Nazis took power, he bought a villa — the Berghof — in the resort. By the late 1930s, Obersalzberg had become an exclusive retreat for the führer and his circle,” he writes.