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.
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.
A son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi is mediating over two Austrians held by al-Qaeda in North Africa and is hopeful they will be freed soon, an Austrian politician was quoted as saying. Saif al-Islam, who heads the Gadaffi Foundation charity, has been in touch with the kidnappers, said Carinthia governor Joerg Haider.
Peek behind the giant screen that shows the action replays at a soccer game, and chances are that you’ll see the badge of an Italian firm that is one of the five leaders of the sector making big outdoor electronic displays. Thriving Milan-based Tecnovision was among nearly 100 Italian companies pitching for business this week at CeBIT.
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.
Computing-industry leaders claimed on Monday a leading role in the fight against climate change, arguing that software could cut world energy use. ”Green computing” has been adopted as a theme of the CeBIT computing expo, which opens in Hanover, Germany, on Tuesday.
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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/ 18 February 2008
Police in Germany are hunting scammers who tried to obtain money from widows by falsely claiming that their recently deceased husbands had secretly bought mail-order pornography. The police, in the city of Bielefeld, said false invoices had been sent to relatives of deceased men all over Germany.
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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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/ 9 February 2008
Russia did not want a revived arms race with the United States, and has been forced to start a new weapons programme in response to Washington’s planned missile shield in Europe, a Kremlin spokesperson said on Saturday. ”Russia had no intention of getting into an arms race. It is just a necessary response,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
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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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/ 30 January 2008
German nudists will be able to start their holidays early by stripping off on the plane if they take up a new offer from an eastern German travel firm. Travel agency OssiUrlaub.de said it would start taking bookings for a trial nudist day trip from the eastern German town of Erfurt to the popular Baltic Sea resort of Usedom.
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/ 28 January 2008
Researchers in Germany have discovered that a protein found in semen makes HIV 100Â 000 times more virulent than it is alone — thus helping to explain why more than 80% of HIV infections are transmitted via sexual intercourse. German scientists had initially set out to determine whether semen contained factors that inhibit HIV infection.
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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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/ 28 December 2007
The European Central Bank (ECB) said on Friday it would seek to drain a further €150-billion from Eurozone money markets through a new offer aimed at absorbing excess liquidity. The offer had a fixed rate of 4%, the same level as the ECB’s benchmark lending rate, and would come to maturity on December 31.
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/ 26 December 2007
A giant kite designed to help slash the spiralling cost of fuel consumption could herald the winds of change for commercial cargo shipping. The first freighter to be fitted with the hi-tech sail was launched in the north German port of Hamburg in December by Eva Luise Koehler, wife of German President Horst Koehler.
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/ 21 December 2007
European leaders on Friday hailed the expansion of the Schengen passport-free travel zone to nine mostly ex-East Bloc nations as a landmark moment for the continent’s integration. ”This is an historic moment for which we have been waiting for a long time,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
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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”.