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.
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.
German airline Lufthansa said on Monday its pilots had averted a crash at a Hamburg airport after a strong gust of wind caused a plane, with 130 passengers on board, to veer dangerously on landing. Amateur video footage, played repeatedly on German television, showed the Airbus A320 buffeted by crosswinds and driving rain as it landed on Saturday.
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/ 25 February 2008
Police dogs in the German city of Düsseldorf are being fitted out with blue rubber shoes to protect their paws while walking the beat. ”The dogs aren’t too keen yet, but with a few weeks’ training they should be used to them,” Andre Hartwich, a spokesperson for police in the western city, said on Monday.
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/ 12 February 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday he was convinced that Iran was leading a secret operation to build nuclear weapons and urged a greater international effort to prevent Tehran from succeeding. ”We are certain that the Iranians are engaged in a serious … clandestine operation to build up a non-conventional capacity,” Olmert said.
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/ 12 February 2008
Internet dating, speed dating and singles parties are starting to look old hat. In Germany, the public transportation services are becoming matchmakers and the demand has been overwhelming. Berlin commuters looking to contact a beautiful stranger they saw on a train or a bus can now use a free online service to track them down in what organisers call an international first.
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/ 8 February 2008
German authorities have learnt that al-Qaeda is preparing to carry out attacks in Germany, a senior official said in an interview with Die Welt newspaper on Friday. The Secretary of State in the Interior Ministry, August Hanning, said al-Qaeda leaders based in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan have ”decided to carry out attacks in Germany”.
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/ 5 February 2008
Amid the memorial services to mark Wednesday’s 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster, for survivor Sir Bobby Charlton the memories of that fateful day are never far from his thoughts. At 2.04pm GMT on Wednesday, exactly 50 years since crash, the 23 people in the disaster who lost their lives will be remembered.
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/ 4 February 2008
Nine people, including five children, were killed in a fire in an apartment building in the western German city of Ludwigshafen, police said on Monday. Adults and children jumped out of windows to escape the flames, officials said. Twenty people were being treated in hospital with injuries.
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/ 23 January 2008
Construction workers in Germany have uncovered at least 36 bodies in the central city of Kassel, police said on Wednesday, which city officials believe could be the remains of slave labourers from a Nazi armaments factory. ”It could well be that more skeletons will be found,” a police spokesperson said.
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/ 22 January 2008
World powers said they would have to overcome key differences on Tuesday to agree on a new sanctions resolution against Iran that aims to ratchet up pressure on Tehran to curb sensitive nuclear work. The West has been engaged in a diplomatic showdown with Iran over its nuclear programme since 2002.
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/ 19 January 2008
The last unpublished work of one of the 20th century’s greatest writers may be close to being destroyed in fulfilment of the author’s last wishes, his son has hinted. Vladimir Nabokov requested in his will that his unfinished novel, The Original of Laura, be destroyed on his death.
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/ 16 January 2008
Late last year a hotel in Dresden sent an unambiguous message to two prospective neo-Nazi guests — please do not come. "Since I would not know how to encourage my staff to greet you or serve you, I beg you to cancel your stay," Johannes Lohmeyer, manager of a Holiday Inn in the picturesque east German city, wrote to the two men.
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/ 14 January 2008
German academics believe they have solved the centuries-old mystery behind the identity of the Mona Lisa in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous portrait. Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the sixteenth-century painting.
Ever since the city’s dramatic reunification in late 1989, Berlin has enjoyed a boom in tourism, with figures surging upwards every year. More than 17-million people visited Berlin in 2007 — eight million more than in the first year after the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 — proving the old-new German capital is now one of Europe’s most magnetic and exciting destinations.
Gideon Roemer-Hillebrecht dons his skullcap for prayers and on special occasions when he wears his army uniform. But he hides his Jewish headgear under a hat when he takes a walk. For security reasons, he says. Unthinkable for many Jews, Roemer-Hillebrecht serves as a staff officer in the German armed forces.
A woman in Germany put an end to her troubled marriage by chopping up her husband and flushing parts of him down the toilet, authorities said on Tuesday. ”’You won’t find him, I’ve flushed him down the toilet,’ is what she told [her children],” said Andre Hartwich, a spokesperson for police in the western city of Düsseldorf.
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/ 14 December 2007
German fathers are staying home with their newborn babies in unexpectedly high numbers in the first year of a generous government subsidy meant to boost the country’s low birth rate, officials said on Friday. Fathers accounted for about 10% of subsidy beneficiaries in the third quarter of this year, a major shift in the attitude of German men taking time off work.
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/ 12 December 2007
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday defended her attack on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s human rights record at the European Union-Africa summit in Lisbon, which saw her branded a racist by Harare. "Freedom and tolerance, democracy and human rights form the foundation for existing side-by-side in dignity," she said.
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/ 12 December 2007
Michael Schumacher can add the unofficial title of Germany’s fastest taxi driver to his other achievements after taking over behind the wheel to get his family to the airport on time. The retired Formula One champion drove the cab back to the airport himself after a trip out to the village of Gehuelz.
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/ 11 December 2007
The German Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned Zimbabwe’s chief diplomat in Berlin to protest comments from the country’s information minister, who was reported as calling Chancellor Angela Merkel a ”fascist”. Merkel told a summit on the weekend that the government of Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe was ”damaging the image of Africa”.
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/ 5 December 2007
Johannes Heesters, the world’s oldest stage performer, turned 104 in Berlin on Wednesday, with the Dutch-born operetta singer set to do a birthday special in the evening in a city theatre. Heesters kept to his habit of rising late and breakfasting on cappuccino while phone calls of congratulation had to wait, his wife said.
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/ 1 December 2007
European football’s governing body Uefa has called in police organisation Europol to investigate possible match-fixing by Asian betting syndicates in top-flight European football, Der Spiegel magazine is reporting in it’s Monday edition.
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/ 30 November 2007
A record lottery jackpot of €38-million (about R379-million) has led to a huge jump in ticket sales ahead of Saturday’s draw in Germany, lottery officials said on Friday. Business was reported brisk at the 24 500 outlets where tickets are available for the Lotto.
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/ 22 November 2007
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hit back at her Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday in a row over China policy that has highlighted rising tensions in the left-right coalition. On the day Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, took over as Vice-Chancellor, Merkel defended her decision to meet the Dalai Lama two months ago.
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/ 12 November 2007
The leaders of Germany and France meet on Monday to compare notes on dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme, fresh from discussing tougher sanctions during separate visits to United States President George Bush last week. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin for the talks a week before an expected meeting of world powers.
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/ 5 November 2007
A German pensioner secretly cut down or shortened 122 trees in a publicly owned forest to give his holiday cottage a clear view of the Baltic Sea, police said on Thursday. The 70-year-old Hamburg resident told police he had felled 56 trees with a chainsaw and left only the bottom four metres of 66 others.
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/ 2 November 2007
Images of Madeleine McCann, the British four-year old who went missing six months ago in Portugal, have been printed in a spoof supermarket advertisement by a German satirical magazine, outraging her parents. The ”Find Maddie” photo-spread in Titanic has prompted a chorus of complaints in the British media.
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/ 29 October 2007
Passengers on a German train mistook a Halloween reveller dressed up as a gore-covered zombie for a murder victim and called the police. The 24-year-old man fell into a drunken slumber on his way home from a Halloween party in Hamburg, police in the northern town of Bad Segeberg said on Monday.
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/ 29 October 2007
Seven police cars chased a go-cart at high speed for 5km through the winding streets of the western German town of Moenchengladbach but were not able to keep up with the teenager. Police later discovered the go-cart driver hiding in a garage.
Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to Africa on Wednesday with the message that Germany is keen to step up cooperation with the continent to help combat poverty and disease. The chancellor’s trip to Ethiopia, South Africa and Liberia from October 3 to 7 will focus on economic development, social issues and business ties.
Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German capital is becoming ever more popular with young tourists who have made it Europe’s third most visited city, as much for the <i>über</i>-cool nightclubs as for the history. Defying all expectations, the city drew more foreign visitors in the first half of the year than in 2006 when Germany hosted the Soccer World Cup.