Justine Henin-Hardenne doesn’t want to hear that she’s the French Open favourite — she just wants rest. The Belgian remains unbeaten on clay this year and ran her winning streak to 17 matches by winning the German Open on Sunday, a key tune-up for the grand-slam event starting in two weeks.
Bidding for Pope Benedict XVI’s old Volkswagen, on offer on eBay Germany, topped €100 000 (R772 000) on Thursday, 10 times the price the current owner paid for it. A few hours before the sale was set to close, the page on the internet auction website had registered 6,3-million hits.
If Maria Sharapova wants to claim the world’s top ranking at the German Open, she may have to earn it the hard way. Sharapova needs to win the title at the €1-million event, a major French Open tune-up, to unseat Lindsay Davenport. On Wednesday, the 18-year-old Russian breezed past 40th-ranked Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany.
A computer virus spreading through fake e-mails crashed the computers of the Soccer World Cup organising committee on Tuesday, overloading the system with millions of e-mails. The virus is contained in attachments coming from senders with addresses such as ”[email protected]” or ”[email protected]”, telling fans they have won tickets to next year’s tournament.
Up to 150 000 self-styled witches and warlocks, New Age practioners and the simply curious are converging for May Eve revelries on the summit of the highest peak in the Harz Mountains, Germany, on Saturday night. April 30, or May Day Eve, is called Walpurgis Night, formerly the date of the pagan festival marking the start of summer.
Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported on Saturday: they exploded. According to reports, as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a metre.
German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer, the charismatic left-wing revolutionary who became an international statesman, is embroiled in the most serious crisis of his career. A scandal over relaxing the requirements for visas allowed tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans to flood into Germany from 2000 to 2003.
A German court on Friday ordered the retrial of a cannibal who killed and cooked a willing victim, saying his eight-and-a-half-year jail sentence for manslaughter was too lenient. Armin Meiwes admitted to the killing, but the trial judge sensationally ruled the two were simply ”psychologically sick people who found each other”.
German newspapers reacted with fury on Thursday to British media reports focusing on Pope Benedict XVI’s teenage membership of the Hitler Youth. Bild, Germany’s bestselling newspaper, led a chorus of outrage with the headline ”Hitler Youth — the English insult German pope”.
The International Olympic Committee ethics commission summoned the leaders of the cities vying for the 2012 Olympics on Tuesday to examine whether any of them have broken bidding rules by offering financial and other incentives. New York and London have promised subsidies, free marketing and other benefits.
Four schoolgirls held by an Iranian man armed with two knives were freed by police after a five-hour hostage drama in western Germany on Tuesday, a police spokesperson said. Police said one of the girls was slightly injured by a knife but they were otherwise unhurt.
Chelsea advanced to the Champions League semifinals on Tuesday despite losing 3-2 at Bayern Munich. Chelsea conceded two late goals, but still advanced 6-5 on aggregate, having won last week’s first leg 4-2. Frank Lampard, who scored two goals in the first game, put Chelsea ahead before Claudio Pizarro made it 1-1.
A man armed with two knives pulled several schoolchildren off a public bus in a north-west German town on Tuesday and forced at least four of them into a nearby house. Police quickly surrounded the home. The mother of one of the children who escaped from the bus said the man told them he wants to bring his family to Germany from Iran.
Organisers of a performance-art show featuring 100 naked women had to call in police reinforcements to control a long and impatient queue of people, police said on Saturday. Scuffles broke out late on Friday as people tried to jump over the barriers to get closer to the women.
Uranus may be responsible for recent devastating Asian sea quakes because the mystery-shrouded ”planet of calamity” is unusually close to the Earth, tabloid newspaper readers in Germany were warned on Wednesday. The report in the Bildnewspaper cites an array of experts ranging from Nasa scientists to TV astrologers.
A German anatomist whose exhibit of preserved corpses has drawn international controversy went to court on Tuesday to appeal against a court ruling that said he was not qualified to use the title ”professor”. Gunther von Hagens’s Body Worlds show has generated curiosity and outrage, drawing several million visitors worldwide.
Sixty years after the end of World War II, Germany is still nowhere near completing the job of destroying thousands of tonnes of unexploded bombs, shells, mines and grenades. In the eastern state of Brandenburg, encircling Berlin, a 4Â 000km chunk of land is contaminated with leftover bombs, shells and other potentially dangerous and ageing munitions.
The new cellphone models unveiled at the CeBIT technology show on Wednesday let users do more than just call a friend to catch up. How about sending a brief film clip of you by the fountain in Rome? Or perhaps a picture snapped of the Eiffel Tower with an image quality so fine it could be blown up and put in a 25cm x 35cm frame.
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/ 23 February 2005
Demonstrators pulled a float portraying a prisoner being beaten at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison through the German city of Mainz on Wednesday, part of a protest by several thousand people against visiting United States President George Bush. Police said about 5 000 people turned out for the rally and parade.
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/ 23 February 2005
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has acknowledged his team need to defend much better if they are to have any chance of overcoming Bayern Munich to reach the quarterfinals of the Champions League. Arsenal fell to a 3-1 defeat in the last 16 encounter in Munich on Tuesday as their brittle defence was torn apart by Bayern.
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/ 23 February 2005
As the formula-one season is about to start, Michael Schumacher is once again the overwhelming favourite and few would bet against him adding yet another title to his already impressive array of trophies. He is confident that he can add another. ”I am feeling even stronger now than I did at the beginning of my career,” he says.
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/ 7 February 2005
People who feel the need to talk to their near and dear even after they have passed away can now do so quite literally, thanks to a special cellphone invented by a German who wanted to keep in touch with his late mother. The system consists of a one-way phone and loudspeaker device that can be buried close to the person’s coffin.
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/ 3 February 2005
Four referees and 14 players are among 25 people suspected of manipulating at least 10 games, including first-division matches, Berlin prosecutors said in Germany’s growing match-fixing scandal on Wednesday. Police raided the homes of 19 people across the country early on Wednesday and seized documents.
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/ 2 February 2005
A Bundesliga player on Tuesday said that he was offered a €15 000 bribe by a mystery caller if his team won a match during the 2003 season. The revelation made by Ranisav Jovanovic is the latest twist in the match-fixing scandal that has rocked German football as it prepares to host the 2006 World Cup.
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/ 1 February 2005
The corruption scandal engulfing the Bundesliga shows no sign of dying down with bookmaker Oddset accusing the German Football Federation of failing to heed a tip-off they gave on August 23 of last year. That was two days after SC Paderborn’s 4-2 win over SV Hamburg in the league cup — one of the four matches Berlin official Robert Hoyzer has since admitting to manipulating.
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/ 24 January 2005
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder condemned on Monday a far-right party whose members refused to observe a minute’s silence for the victims of the Nazis, marring Auschwitz anniversary commemorations. ”This attitude hurts us and is not the image of Germany we want to project,” he said.
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/ 24 January 2005
The murdered German fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer has left his luxurious home to his beloved Yorkshire terrier Daisy, the mass market <i>Bild</i> newspaper reported on Friday. Moshammer’s former chauffeur, identified only as Andreas K (44), will move in with the dog.
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/ 20 January 2005
The judge at the court martial of three British soldiers accused in the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees on Thursday urged British officials — including Prime Minister Tony Blair — to restrain their comments to avoid prejudicing the jury. The judge’s remarks followed statements by Blair in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
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/ 20 January 2005
British soldiers in Iraq had to be reminded not to mistreat their prisoners after it became clear that there was a ”problem”, a court martial in Germany heard on Wednesday. Defence lawyers claim that the soldiers were only following orders from their superiors.
Britain’s ‘Abu Ghraib trial’
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/ 19 January 2005
Images of British soldiers described as shocking and appalling that allegedly show the abuse of Iraqi prisoners were shown to a court martial in Germany on Tuesday as the long-awaited case of three members of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers got under way.
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/ 18 January 2005
German linguists, always on guard to protect the language, announced on Tuesday that ”Humankapital” — ”human capital” — was the ”ugly word” of 2004, in their view. The jury of linguists said the term is degrading to employees and reduces people ”merely to an economically quantifiable size”.
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/ 14 January 2005
The European probe Huygens descended towards the Saturn moon Titan on Friday, culminating a seven-year quest covering 2,1-billion kilometres to explore one of the greatest enigmas of the solar system. Mission controllers shouted for joy when Huygens sent a radio signal, proving it had survived the entry.