Berlin

Three teenagers may face a hefty fine if a court decides their festive firecrackers outside an eastern German farm scared the libido right out of an ostrich named Gustav. Rico Gabel, a farmer in Lohsa, north-east of Dresden, is claiming â,¬4 900 in damages for the alleged antics by the three youths.

Exam supervisors at a German university stuck to rules so rigidly that a man with a bladder dysfunction had to urinate in a bottle in front of 120 fellow students because they would not let him go to the toilet. Overseers at the University of Freiburg told the man that he would be failed if he left the room during the exam.

The head of the Catholic Church in Germany called on his compatriots on Thursday to give up their beloved cars for Lent to make a personal contribution to preventing climate change. Cardinal Karl Lehmann said on Thursday that the period of 40 days before Easter in the Christian calendar ”requires us to rethink our lifestyle”.

Oscar-winning director Bille August has brought the memoirs of one of Nelson Mandela’s jailers to the screen, with Dennis Haysbert playing the famous prisoner — a part that he said regularly left him in tears. Goodbye Bafana premiered on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival, where it is competing for the Golden Bear award.

Emergency services across northern Europe counted the cost on Friday of a devastating storm that killed at least 38 people and left widespread damage and disruption. Winds of up to 200kph swept off the Atlantic and cut a path across Britain, northern France, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and the Czech Republic.

A severe storm front battered the British Isles and Germany on Thursday, causing havoc with shipping and leaving one man dead in England, with forecasters predicting worse weather to come. In the English Channel, French and British helicopters began winching to safety the 26 crew who abandoned a sinking cargo ship off the coast of Cornwall.

A 46-year-old German motorist driving along a busy road suddenly veered to the left and ended up stuck on a railway track — because his satellite navigation system told him to, police said on Sunday. The motorist was heading into the north German city of Bremen ”when the friendly voice from his satnav told him to turn left,” a spokesperson said.

Former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich said on Saturday he was determined to make a cycling comeback despite the cloud of doping suspicion hanging over him. ”I know very well that returning to professional sport will be difficult but I’m determined to fight and to succeed,” said Ullrich on his website.

”Cinnamon hotline, guten Tag. How can I help you?” Amid a health scare over traditional cinnamon cookies, Germans are racing to get the facts on the sugar and spice they consume by the truckload at Christmastime. The culprit is coumarin, a toxic chemical compound smelling of newly mown hay that naturally occurs in cinnamon grown in China.

A German passenger train was brought to a shuddering halt when a soccer ball flew from a nearby pitch and hit a brake pipe, triggering an automatic braking system, police said on Tuesday. ”The ball hit the brake pipe between the locomotive and the first carriage and undid it, leading to a loss of pressure,” said a police spokesperson in the western city of Muenster.

German traffic police were shocked to see a California highway patrol car cruising along the motorway, driven by a man dressed as an authentic United States cop, authorities said on Thursday. But they recovered sufficiently to book the 35-year-old Goettingen resident, whose uniform badge read ”TJ Lazer”.

English football fans rioted in the German city of Cologne overnight on Wednesday ahead of Tottenham’s Uefa Cup match against Bayer Leverkusen, police said. A group of about 80 fans smashed up the interior of a pub, causing damage costing  450 and a car was damaged. One English supporter was hurt in the incident.

Germany’s seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher has, for the first time, ruled out a return to Formula One, saying the sport is so fast-moving that it is impossible to jump back suddenly into the cockpit. ”Once you are out, you are out for good,” Schumacher said in an interview.

Some things never change. At least not at the Merkels’s breakfast table. Despite becoming Chancellor of Europe’s most populous country a year ago, Angela Merkel still prepares breakfast for her scientist husband, Joachim Sauer, she told Germany’s mass-circulation Bild newspaper on Wednesday.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter once again dismissed fears that the next World Cup could be moved from South Africa and said the 2010 hosts were further along at this point than Germany were four years ago. ”They’ll get it done,” Blatter was quoted as telling German magazine Sport Bild on Tuesday. ”It can and will take place in South Africa — I’m convinced of that.”

Haiti, Burma and Iraq are perceived as the most corrupt countries in the world, while Finland is seen as the cleanest, a respected global graft watchdog reported on Monday. South Africa was 51st among 163 countries listed in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, down from 46th last year.

Hundreds of euro bills in Germany have mysteriously disintegrated in the past several months, apparently due to exposure to sulfuric acid, police and the German central bank said on Thursday. The first case surfaced in June in Berlin when a €20 bill crumbled upon contact.

Iran is unlikely to be able to develop a nuclear bomb before 2015, the chief of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency said on Tuesday. His estimate falls within the three to 10 year range of forecasts given by most international experts. ”It is difficult to give an exact estimate of the time,” BND head Ernst Uhrlau told a security conference.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday paid tribute to seven-time Formula One champion Michael Schumacher, saying he was one of the biggest German sports stars of all time and had ”brought a bit of genius” to racing. ”You are on the list of the great names of German sport …,” the chancellor told the retired racing ace in a letter published in Bild daily.

A fire that destroyed a cottage near Bonn and injured a 77-year-old man was probably caused by a meteor, and witnesses saw an arc of blazing light in the sky, German police said on Friday. Burkhard Rick, a spokesperson for the police in Siegburg east of Bonn, said the fire gutted the cottage.

An 80-year-old German motorist obediently following his navigation system ignored a motorway ”closed for construction” sign and crashed his Mercedes into a pile of sand further down the road. ”The driver was following the orders from his navigation system and even though there was a sufficient number of warnings and barricades, he continued his journey into the construction site,” a police spokesperson told Reuters.

Germany’s seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher is determined to sign off with an eighth Formula One title this season but said he would not underestimate the threat posed by Renault and their reigning champion Fernando Alonso. Schumacher (37) announced his retirement after winning the last Grand Prix in Monza.

Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher will announce at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix that he is retiring at the end of the season, Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday. The 37-year-old Schumacher will announce that he will complete the season by racing in Shanghai, Suzuka and São Paulo before hanging up his helmet and overalls.