Italian car giant Fiat on Friday said it could not improve its offer to buy Opel against a rival bid and would not attend key talks on the takeover.
Germany is bracing for its biggest May Day protests in years amid fears of a rise in social unrest caused by the worst recession since World War II.
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/ 13 February 2009
G7 finance ministers are under pressure to prove they can work together to stop the rot rather than engaging in a battle of "beggar-thy-neighbour".
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/ 13 January 2009
The costs of a new financial stimulus plan and a slumping economy will cause Germany’s budget deficit to hit a record in 2009, a top lawmaker said.
Stakeholders in the transport of Siberian gas to Europe should form a consortium to manage the pipelines, a leader of German business said on Friday.
Russia halts gas supplies to the Balkans, Turkey and south-eastern Europe, while flows to Austria drop by 90% in a deepening price row
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/ 12 December 2008
”Finanzkrise” — meaning financial crisis — was recently picked as Germany’s phrase of the year by a panel of experts.
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/ 12 October 2008
Exactly 1 400 days after his last fight, Vitali Klitschko beat champion Samuel Peter on Saturday to regain the WBC heavyweight belt.
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/ 21 September 2008
A few years ago Heinrich von Pierer was "Mr Siemens", head of a German industrial titan making everything from nuclear power stations to cellphones.
A monument dedicated to the thousands of gay people persecuted and tortured by the Nazis has been vandalised in Berlin.
The British public remains largely unaware of the industrial killing of civilians in Britain’s modern colonial wars.
For the man who has brought rock-star charisma to politics, Thursday saw the campaign rally as a gathering of peace, love and loathing of George Bush.
Obamania is all the rage ahead of next week’s visit to Berlin, Paris and London by a man described in newspapers as a ”John Kennedy of our time”.
”Adolf Hitler has left us — after a very short visit,” concluded Die Welt am Sonntag after an attack on a wax figure of the Nazi leader.
Rafael Nadal dethroned five-time champion Roger Federer as king of Wimbledon on Sunday with an epic 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5/7), 6-7 (8/10), 9-7 win.
It has long been considered the most troublesome character in the German alphabet. But champions of the Eszett were celebrating its red-letter day.
Plans to include an Adolf Hitler figure in the new Berlin branch of Madame Tussauds wax museum are being condemned by critics, who say displaying the dictator is tasteless and could attract neo-Nazis. Madame Tussauds argues Hitler is part of German history and deserves a place in the exhibition near the Brandenburg Gate.
Further outbreaks of violence against foreigners in South Africa could lead Fifa to move the 2010 World Cup elsewhere, the United Nations adviser on sport said on Thursday. Willi Lemke said if the scenes repeat themselves, ”Fifa will rethink its decision in favour of South Africa and, if necessary, pull the plug.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for an international peacekeeping force to be deployed in Zimbabwe to prevent any violence during a presidential run-off ballot next month. Zimbabwe is due to hold the delayed second-round ballot on June 27, when the opposition hopes to oust veteran leader Robert Mugabe.
The German government on Monday brushed off a verbal attack from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in which the leftist leader said Chancellor Angela Merkel was a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and German fascism. Merkel sets off for her first trip to Latin America on Tuesday.
In the latest case of apparent infanticide to shock Germany, police said on Monday that they found three dead babies in a freezer and arrested a woman believed to be the children’s mother. Police said the woman’s grown-up son and daughter discovered the tiny corpses on Saturday evening when they were looking for something to eat when their parents were out.
The head of Germany’s Social Democrats, who has ambitions to be his country’s next leader, is thinking about donating his beard to charity, but is not quite sure. Kurt Beck, who has a strong claim to lead the SPD into next year’s national election, said he might shave off his beard to raise €1-million for charity.
A former German army officer involved in two failed plots to assassinate Hitler, but who remained undetected until the end of World War II, has died aged 90, his family said on May 2. Philipp von Boeselager was one of eight officers who planned to shoot Hitler and SS head Heinrich Himmler in March 1943.
African National Congress president Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday Africa must send a mission to Zimbabwe to end a delay in issuing election results, which he called unacceptable. Zuma has made several forthright comments on the election delay, distancing himself from South African President Thabo Mbeki, the regional mediator.
You might think they belong in the trash, but what according to the <i>Guinness World Records</i> is the world’s largest collection of used crisp packets went on show in a German museum this week. The exhibit at the Hamaland museum in Vreden, north-west Germany, showcases the 2 000-bag collection of a local resident.
A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected Nasa’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with the Earth, a German newspaper reported on Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated. Nico Marquardt calculated that there is a one-in-450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth.
A German orchestra has dropped a composition from its programme after its members claimed the music was so loud that it gave them ear problems and headaches. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BR) said it had little choice but to drop the world premiere of Swedish-Israeli composer Dror Feiler’s Halat Hisar (State of Siege).
Despite sagging global growth, soaring oil prices and the threat of renewed turmoil hanging over share markets, Europe appears to have managed so far to weather the storm unleashed by the upheaval in the United States housing market and fears of a major world economic slump.
A vicar in Germany who had the novel idea of helping parishioners escape the stresses and strains of daily life by letting them lie in an open grave was upset when intrusive journalists spoiled the atmosphere. ”I meant it as a meditative exercise,” said pastor Thorsten Nolting.
The agony of the recorded-music industry as it fights the ”world of free” on the internet may have become a little more painful in Germany this month, with a court ruling that seems to restrict surveillance of web users. The industry in Western Europe’s most populous nation says it employs 98 sleuths working 24 hours a day.
South Africa’s economy and civil society are strong, ensuring the country will not follow the downward spiral of Zimbabwe, FW de Klerk, the last white president of the country, said in an interview published in Germany on Wednesday. De Klerk also predicted a period of great uncertainty and warned that crime was driving skilled white people out of the country.
Kenya is determined to make a success of a power-sharing deal designed to end a bloody two-month political crisis that has claimed 1 500 lives, Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula said on Friday. Kenya plunged into its worst post-independence crisis after opposition leader Raila Odinga accused President Mwai Kibaki of rigging December elections.