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/ 11 October 2006
The facts are well-known — from 1933 the Nazis murdered more than 200Â 000 physically and mentally disabled people, including a cousin of Adolf Hitler believed to have been schizophrenic. But it has taken more than 60 years for an exhibition to trace in detail the fate of the first victims of Hitler’s sinister "health" policies, based on his obsession with racial purity that led to the Holocaust.
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/ 10 October 2006
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.
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/ 25 September 2006
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.
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/ 6 September 2006
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.
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/ 3 September 2006
Europe’s first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission on Sunday by crashing into the lunar surface in a volcanic plane called the Lake of Excellence, to a round of applause in the mission control room. Hitting at 2km per second, the impact of the Smart-1 spacecraft was expected to leave a 3m-by-10m crater.
It is known as Denglisch, a hybrid of Deutsch and English, and cultural purists say it is an insult to the language of Goethe and should be purged from the vocabulary. Denglisch has spread steadily as Germans adopted United States phrases in business, advertising, technology, and everyday speech.
A German woman who was held up and robbed in her Berlin apartment earlier this month was astonished to see the thief waiting to board her flight from Antalya in Turkey to the German capital, police said on Tuesday. The 37-year-old woman telephoned her husband who alerted the authorities, police spokesperson Joerg Kunzendorf said.
Borussia Dortmund’s South African striker Delron Buckley is moving to Swiss club Basel on a season-long loan deal, the German side announced on Tuesday. Buckley joined Dortmund last year after scoring 15 league goals for Arminia Bielefeld in the 2004/05 season but he failed to find the net even once in the Bundesliga last term.
German investigators said on Friday they suspected that homemade bombs found on two trains last month were a failed terror attack. It was first thought that the devices packed into cases in trains in the western cities of Dortmund and Koblenz on July 31 were a blackmail attempt, but analysis of the contents has revealed a possible link to Lebanon.
Parks and pavements in Germany are full of cyclists this summer, but not bicyclists. Almost everywhere, children, teenagers and adults are riding about on unicycles as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Unicycles, long associated with circuses, are making a comeback.
Car makers are developing increasingly sophisticated driver-assistance systems to boost safety, comfort and the fun factor. Some technology that is already standard in many vehicles, such as ESP (electronic stability programme), can significantly reduce the number of injuries and deaths in road accidents, according to tests conducted by the German technical testing authority Dekra
A neo-Nazi organisation is poised to purchase a hotel in a town in Germany after local residents failed to come up with enough money to stop the sale. In a race against the clock that made headlines around the world, people in Delmenhorst near Bremen held bake sales and staged fund-raising barbecues to try to scrape together money to thwart a rich, neo-Nazi lawyers’ organisation from buying property in their town.
Germany is honouring Bertolt Brecht with fanfare on the 50th anniversary of his death, hinting that the country is ready at last to embrace the playwright and poet as a national hero and forgive him for going to his grave a communist. There is no ignoring Brecht as theatres from Berlin to Bonn to Hanover dust off his plays.
Roland Schoeman became the first man to dip under 21 seconds as he shattered the world short-course record in the 50m freestyle at an invitational meeting in Hamburg on Saturday. The triple Olympic medallist swam a blistering 20,98 seconds in the morning heats, bettering the previous mark of 21,10 set by Frenchman Fred Bousquet in March 2004.
Work on three of South Africa’s new stadiums for the 2010 soccer World Cup can be completed in three years, though such a tight timetable would not have been feasible in bureaucratic Germany, says a German architect involved in the project. ”By 1999, we were already planning for the Olympic Stadium. That’s seven years before the event took place,” he told journalists in Berlin.
German cyclist Jan Ullrich was supplied with a potent cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs by the Spanish doctor accused of running a doping ring that has left the sport in crisis, it was reported in Germany on Saturday. The allegations were made by anti-doping campaigner Werner Franke in a newspaper interview.
Police in the German city of Aachen received an unusual call for help late on Wednesday when a woman telephoned to complain her husband was not fulfilling his sexual obligations. After the couple had been sleeping in separate beds for several months without intimate contact, the 44-year-old woman woke the husband (45) in the middle of the night and demanded he satisfy her needs.
Defending world champion Fernando Alonso is not worried about Michael Schumacher’s current dominant form, despite being beaten by his rival for the third race in a row. Schumacher’s fourth victory in his home race, the German Grand Prix, helped him slash Alonso’s championship lead from 17 points to 11.
Michael Schumacher could not hide his surprise at Ferrari’s dominance after he won the German Grand Prix for the fourth time at Hockenheim on Sunday. The seven-times world champion German led home his Brazilian teammate Felipe Massa for his third win in a row.
Michael Schumacher is confident of continuing his superb recent form in front of his home crowd at the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, Germany, this weekend. The seven-time world champion (37) has cut Spaniard Fernando Alonso’s championship lead from 25 to 17 points after winning the last two races in dominant fashion.
Manchester United’s Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy wants to play for Bayern Munich next season according to Bild newspaper, though Spanish press claim he will join Real Madrid. Bayern club president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, quoted by Thursday’s Bild, said the offer was for â,¬13-million.
The top World Cup official in Berlin has died four days after shooting himself in the head just hours after the final, the German press reported on Friday. The <i>Berliner Morgenpost</i> quoted a spokesperson of the Charite hospital as saying Juergen Kiessling (65) passed away on Thursday.
As the charismatic, 41-year-old Jurgen Klinsmann on Wednesday stunned about 82-million Germans by declaring he was stepping down as national soccer coach after a tenure of two years, South African observers in Germany gathering ideas for the hosting of the 2010 World Cup were echoing the sentiment: ”Where can Bafana find another Klinsmann?”
It is designed as an ongoing, sometimes routine meeting between President Thabo Mbeki and his team of advisers on the one hand, and the captains of South African industry on the other. But when all the camaraderie is completed at Wednesday’s get-together, Mamelodi Sundowns president Patrice Motsepe intends to exhort big businesses to support South African soccer to the hilt.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday certain ”major powers” should play a bigger role in the world body, but declined to name favourites for any new permanent seats on the Security Council. ”I have always maintained that no reform to the UN will be complete without a reform of the Security Council.,” Annan said.
German champions Bayern Munich on Monday confirmed they want to sign Manchester United striker Ruud van Nistelrooy. Dutch star Van Nistelrooy (30) looks certain to leave Old Trafford this summer after falling out with United manager Sir Alex Ferguson at the end of last season.
A day after the World Cup ended, host nation Germany was not only counting the immediate economic benefits for businesses during the month-long mega-event, but also was hoping that the party mood will continue for the eurozone’s biggest economy in the much longer term.
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France captain Zinedine Zidane, sent off for headbutting Marco Materazzi late in Sunday’s World Cup final loss to Italy, won the Golden Ball award for the tournament’s best player. The results were released on Monday morning in Berlin by Fifa.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=soccer_world_cup_2006"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/272488/icon_focuson_wc3.gif" align=left border=0></a>France captain Zinedine Zidane, sent off for headbutting Marco Materazzi late in Sunday’s World Cup final loss to Italy, won the Golden Ball award for the tournament’s best player. The results were released on Monday morning in Berlin by Fifa.
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To the very end of his career, Zinedine Zidane could dictate the flow of play with rare skill and elegant control of the ball. In the World Cup final, Zidane lost control of his temper. The parting image for the France captain will forever be him rearing back in anger, lowering his head and launching his bald crown into the chest of Italy defender Marco Materazzi after the two exchanged words.
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One person was conspicuous by his absence from the podium when Italy’s players received their winners’ medals and German President Horst Koehler handed their captain Fabio Cannavaro the World Cup. The president of football’s world controlling body Fifa Joseph Blatter was not amongst the host of dignitaries present at the award ceremony after the 5-3 penalty shoot-out win over France.
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Italy won the World Cup in a penalty shoot-out, beating France 5-3 on Sunday after a 1-1 draw through 120 minutes. David Trezeguet hit the crossbar with France’s second spot kick to give Italy its fourth World Cup title, and Fabio Grosso made the deciding kick. ”It’s incredibly emotional, words cannot hardly describe it,” Grosso said after the final whistle.