Tag: German

KUNDUZ - Police in northern Afghanistan said on Thursday that German troops based in the area had accidentally killed one woman and injured another during an exchange of fire.
The incident happened in the Chahar Dara district of Kunduz province on Wednesday when German troops came under attack and retaliated with gunfire, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili said. "German troops patrolling Chahar Dara district opened fire on civilian houses yesterday afternoon,"

BERLIN - Discipline was even worse than feared on a three-masted German navy training ship at the centre of a scandal that has put the defence minister under pressure, Spiegel magazine reported on Tuesday.
The new allegations reportedly include death threats and aggressive sexual harassment against cadets on the Gorch Fock, a vessel at the centre of a spiralling scandal facing Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Trainers told one cadet that they were members of the Aryan

WIESBADEN - Germany's economy rebounded last year at its fastest pace since reunification but consumer spending stayed modest, leaving analysts and other euro zone states hoping a more balanced recovery would take hold this year.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 3.6 percent, preliminary Federal Statistics Office data showed on Wednesday, bouncing back from a 4.7 percent slump - its steepest since World War II - in 2009. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle talked up Germany's

ISLAMABAD - Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Sunday asked Germany for greater market access to Pakistan, which he said would create jobs in the country confronting grave economic problems.
Talking to Dr Guido Westerwelle, Deputy Chancellor/Foreign Minister of Germany, Prime Minister Gilani underlined the need for greater market access to Pakistan, particularly in the militancy-affected areas and which Gilani said would deny extremists the opportunities to exploit the present

ISLAMABAD - Hailing Pakistan's role in the process of reconciliation and integration for peace in Afghanistan, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Saturday that the solution to the crisis in Afghanistan is political and not military. "We support the process of integration and reconciliation for peace in Afghanistan. It is our common interest to have stability there," German Foreign Minister said while answering questions of reporters in a joint press conference with

BERLIN - A former striker at Bundesliga club St. Pauli was quoted by a magazine on Tuesday admitting to pocketing more than 100,000 euros (134,000 dollars) in bribes to fix five matches in 2008.
The Stern weekly cited Rene Schnitzler as saying in an interview that he had received the cash to manipulate five away matches during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 seasons when the Hamburg outfit were still in the second division.
He said an agent named "Paul" handed him the money to

BERLIN: Reuters German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet agreed on Wednesday to end the country's compulsory military service, government sources said, in what is the largest reform of the postwar army since its founding. The plan envisages cutting the number of troops by 65,000 to 185,000, and from July of next year ending a draft that has conscripted generations of young men to the federal army formed after Germany's defeat in World War II.
It was unclear what effect the

BERLIN: The Reichstag in Berlin was closed for tourists on Monday following reports of a plot by Islamist extremists to attack the German parliament building.
One of Germany's most popular tourist attractions, the cupola on the Reichstag is visited by some three million tourists each year. On Monday, only groups with an advance booking were allowed through police barricades set up outside.
A spokesman for the Reichstag offered no explanation for the closing of tourist

GORLEBEN: A convoy of 123 tonnes of highly radioactive nuclear waste arrived at its storage site in Germany Tuesday, following days of furious protests that massively delayed the shipment.
Accompanied by swarms of riot police and dozens of armoured police cars, the convoy of 11 white containers on lorries crawled slowly into its storage site at Gorleben, northern Germany, after a 20-kilometre (12-mile) road trip.
The shipment left France on Friday and endured a tortuous

BERLIN: German media offered guarded praise for an agreement in Brussels to make limited changes to the EU treaty, describing it as a compromise that bought time to find a lasting remedy to debt woes that have plagued the bloc.
Under pressure from Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, EU leaders in Brussels agreed that changes were needed to create a permanent system to handle sovereign debt problems and endorsed tougher budgetary rules, including