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/ 25 September 2007
Germany’s politicians are locked in a heated debate after the defence minister signalled his readiness to shoot down hijacked planes at the risk of killing innocent civilians in order to avert a wider disaster. The comments of Josef Jung of the Christian Democrats have unleashed a passionate debate across the parties and led to calls for his resignation this week in an emotional session in the Bundestag, the German Parliament.
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/ 20 September 2007
Staff at a German butcher’s shop were shocked to discover a customer had hidden two sex toys in their sausages for transport to Dubai, police said Wednesday. ”It was two latex dildos with a natural look,” said a spokesperson for police in the south-western city of Mannheim.
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/ 13 September 2007
Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy were expected to form the perfect couple — a pair of like-minded conservative leaders who would work hand in hand to heal Europe after its Iraq divisions and failed constitution. From his first day in office the Frenchman’s bullish diplomacy has grated on his German partners.
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/ 3 September 2007
A series of more than 9 000 mini-memorials in Germany to people killed by the Nazis is for the first time to include an African, Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed, organisers said on Monday. The 10cm-square brass plaques have been cemented into pavements all over the country since 1997 by an artist, Gunter Demnig.
A 16-year-old girl is being questioned by German police after the corpse of her newborn baby was found in a washing machine. She told police in eastern Germany the baby was still-born and she hid the body in a laundry basket, Schering said. The body had been put through the laundry cycle along with bed sheets.
Skippi, a wily kangaroo on the run since early August, was returned to his home at a petting zoo Monday in southern Germany, but not after a chase through the German Alps that left the animal with a strained leg. The injured marsupial was captured in a cornfield near Leutkirch im Allgaeu.
Rock stars from the 1960s and 1970s have been hitting Germany’s lucrative concert circuit but many of the grandpa-generation acts have disappointed fans and provoked withering reviews in Europe’s biggest music market. The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Genesis, the Police and Black Sabbath are among the acts appearing this summer in arenas between the Black Forest and the Baltic.
Support for Nazi ideas in Germany is making people fear for their lives, a government minister said on Tuesday. Wolfgang Tiefensee, the minister responsible for east Germany, was speaking after a mob of about 50 Germans attacked and chased eight Indians through the streets of a small eastern town at the weekend.
Six Italian men were found shot dead in an execution-style killing near a train station in the western German city of Duisburg, police said on Wednesday. ”The six men found with bullet wounds to the head were Italians aged from 16 to 39,” Duisburg police spokesperson Heinrich Rotering said.
One of Germany’s most prominent Holocaust survivors, Anja Lundholm, whose books recounted the horrors she experienced in a Nazi camp after she was allegedly denounced by her own father, has died aged 89, her publisher said on August 6. Munich-based publishing house LangenMueller said Lundholm died on August 4 in Frankfurt.
German workaholics may be suffering from a lack of sex, according to a university study published on Friday. A survey of 32 000 men and women by researchers at the University of Goettingen found over 35% of those reporting unsatisfying sex lives tended to use hard work as a diversion.
Most Germans don’t believe money can buy happiness, according to a survey released on Monday, which found that only 13% of German men care deeply about becoming rich. The figure for women is even lower, with only 6% saying they regard wealth as an important goal, according to the poll.
A German man making a routine trip to the police station to reclaim his stolen car ended up being busted for drunken driving twice in the same day, police said on Wednesday. In order to claim the recovered car, the 45-year-old had driven to the station in another vehicle, police in the western city of Marburg said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday accused the regime of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe of ”unspeakable acts” but said December’s European Union-African Union summit would go ahead even if he attended. ”It cannot be the case that we do not work with a continent just because one country commits unspeakable acts. So everybody will be invited,” said Merkel.
Members of the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrial nations will announce plans to increase the money they spend combating HIV/Aids at an upcoming summit, the German government said on Wednesday. Germany, which currently chairs the G8, hosts a summit of G8 leaders in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm on June 6 to 8.
A naked American tourist raised eyebrows when he went for a walk through a German city and told police he thought this was acceptable behavior in Germany. ”We have been having unusually hot weather here lately but, all the same, we can’t have this,” said a spokesperson for police.
A wheelchair-bound German stunned police when they pulled him over for using the road and found he was 10 times over the legal alcohol limit for drivers. ”He was right in the middle of the road,” said a spokesperson for police in the north-eastern city of Schwerin on Tuesday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed on Monday to the heads of major corporations to invest more in Africa. Africa had an amazing development potential, the chancellor told a meeting of German business leaders in Berlin. Firms that invest in Africa today, ”can reap the benefits tomorrow”, she said.
The World Bank’s executive director Eckhard Deutscher said on Monday that the organisation needed a new strategy after president Paul Wolfowitz was forced out of his position over a pay scandal involving his girlfriend. Deutscher said that the bank must work to improve communication and motivate its workers.
Irish rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof on Tuesday accused the group of eight (G8) nations of falling far behind on pledges of aid to Africa and put pressure on Germany as current head of the club to donate nearly -billion. Geldof said German Chancellor Angela Merkel needed to channel a minimum of -million in aid to Africa this year.
The virtual world of Second Life can be a place where people make new friends, listen to concerts and even campaign for president — but German investigators are looking into a more dangerous use: as a platform for real and virtual child pornography.
Industrialised nations have broken promises to alleviate poverty and provide better health and education, leading to the deaths of millions of people in poorer nations, Oxfam International said on Thursday. Group of Eight (G8) nations had fallen far short of meeting a -billion funding pledge made at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland two years ago.
German authorities launched raids in six German states on Wednesday over concerns that left-wing radicals were planning attacks to disrupt a Group of Eight (G8) summit in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm next month, prosecutors said. The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that about 900 security officials were searching 40 sites in six northern German states.
Germany is to provide an additional â,¬1,5-million to humanitarian organisations working in Somalia, the Foreign Ministry said in Berlin on Friday. The Foreign Office said the move was in response to recent developments in Mogadishu, described as ”cause for concern.” The Red Cross will receive â,¬1-million and a German disaster aid agency the remainder.
Cycling team T-Mobile announced on Tuesday they will investigate allegations made against two of their doctors who, it was claimed in a report on Monday, injected cyclists with erythropoietin. A former trainer claims team doctors Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid administered injections of the banned blood booster in 1996.
A German man called on his bank for an unusual service when he was too tired and drunk to go home — he bedded down there for the night with his horse. The man, identified as ”Wolfgang H” by German media, went to sleep next to cash machines in the local branch of the Mittelbrandenburgische Sparkasse in Wiesenburg, south-west of Berlin.
A pregnant cow being chased by police and fire fighters caused â,¬25Â 000-worth of damage on a three-hour rampage through the German city of Hanover. Uschi escaped from a farm late on Monday and became increasingly violent as she encountered shocked drivers and pedestrians in the city.
Thousands of plant and animal species are disappearing every month due to the effects of global warming, leading environmentalists say. Data has been compiled by scientists from around the world for the new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be released in Brussels on April 6.
Are newspapers set to become yesterday’s news? Don’t count on it, say editors at some of Europe’s iconic publications. The pressures on the industry — in Europe as in the United States — are prodigious: tumbling circulation and ad revenue, competition from the internet and the proliferation of free papers.
A DNA sample taken from former Tour de France champion Jan Ullrich has been matched to blood bags seized in the Spanish doping scandal, German prosecutors said on Tuesday. Prosecutors said the Ullrich investigation would continue and did not comment on when or if he would be charged with anything.
A German court was forced on Monday to postpone the end of a civil case featuring Gustav the ostrich whose owner claims was made impotent by firecrackers thrown into his enclosure. The court in the eastern town of Bautzen had hoped to find an agreement between the owner and three teenagers suspected of throwing the fireworks in 2005.
European travel agencies are ceding a rising share of their business to the internet, as consumers grow accustomed to less personal service but more flexibility. Thirty-six percent of tour operators in the European Union offer online reservations, as well as 40% of package operators and a full 62% of hotels, according to figures compiled by the European Commission.