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... Speaking at a town hall meeting Tuesday, Kerry spoke a few sentences of passable German to the delight of a crowd in a packed Internet cafe before regaling the audience with tales of his boyhood in Berlin in 1954. He recalled a clandestine bicycle ride into communist East Berlin. "I saw the difference between east and west. I saw the people wearing darker clothing. There were fewer cars. I didn't feel the energy or the movement." When he returned home, Kerry said, his father "got very upset with me and said: `You could have created an international incident. I...

BERLIN -- The Germans play "gotcha" with a decidedly Teutonic skill and attitude. The latest victim is Annette Schavan, Chancellor Merkel's education minister, who resigned her position in a gathering storm of accusations that she plagiarized the doctoral dissertation she wrote 32 years ago. The title sounds particularly apt: "Person and Conscience." She held on for a week, fighting back. She insists she will sue to regain her title of "doctor," revoked by Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf. In the age of the Internet, obscure dissertations once relegated to the memory hole, out of mind, unread or assigned to a...

(Reuters) - German firemen rescued a mysteriously naked man trapped in a narrow chimney in central Berlin, a spokesman said on Thursday. The fire brigade was alerted to the emergency after police failed to help the 39-year old man who was wedged 10 metres (yards) down the shoulder-width chimney. "The rescue workers, specialised in saving people at great heights, tried to pull the victim out from above with a crane and a sling," a fire brigade spokesman said. "At first he held on to the rope but then his strength failed him so we had to come up with an...

A proposal by gun store owners to open an indoor gun range in a residential neighborhood in Berlin has homeowners concerned saying it is close to their families. The Berlin Planning and Zoning Commission at 7 p.m. inside the council chambers at Town Hall. The meeting is open to the public. According to the town of Berlin's website, the proposal is to add an indoor gun range to the west side of the Berlin Turnpike in connection with an existing gun shop, BMG Guns & Ammo. The gun shop currently doesn't have gun range for people to practice, which is...

East Germany's secret police sold citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials • Tens of thousands tested with experimental drugs not approved in the West • One study of a drug for heart conditions saw six out of 17 patients die • Sinister practice exposed in disturbing new Germany documentary Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to...

The most striking proof that the Arab anti-Israel cause is a common meeting ground for both Nazis and Communists --and that the Arabs welcomed supporters of both ilks-- lies in the friendship of Carlos, the notorious master terrorist who served the PLO, with Fran*ois Genoud, an old Nazi, one of the leading Nazis in pre-War Switzerland, later a financier who provided funds for Habash's faction of the PLO. "Carlos" (his nom de guerre) was what is called a "red diaper baby." His fabulously rich father, a Venezuelan lawyer and owner of estates, gave "Carlos" the name Ilich, Lenin's patronymic, as...

BERLIN (AP) -- Berlin authorities say they shot and killed a 120 kilogram (265-pound) wild boar after it attacked and injured four people including a police officer in a residential neighborhood. ... Wild boars are relatively common in green Berlin, though rarely cause problems beyond digging up gardens.

Jewish institution hosts Judith Butler, who renews support of BDS movement; 700-strong audience cheers boycott call. BERLIN - The internationally renowned Jewish Museum in Berlin hosted a podium discussion on Saturday with US academic Judith Butler, who renewed her calls to boycott Israel. It appears to be the first anti-Israel event held in the Jewish museum since its opening in 2001 with the aim of exhibiting the 2,000- year history of Germany’s Jews. At least 700 people attended the event. The German taxpayer-funded museum’s decision to showcase a speaker in the capital city, which during the Nazi period served as...

One of Germany’s 16 states has declared circumcision legal, but only if performed by doctors — not, as required by Jewish law, by mohels. Berlin, Germany’s capital and itself a state, is the first to declare the practice legal following a Cologne court ruling in June that non-medical circumcisions on children amounted to a criminal offense, according to DPA, a German news wire. National legislation is pending to legalize circumcision. State Justice Minister Thomas Heilmann made the announcement Wednesday, saying he felt it necessary to allay fears in this “difficult transitional period,” the Associated Press reported.

"British suspected Islamic terrorist arrested in Germany A major German security operation targeted "dangerous" Islamist extremists in dawn raids by 850 police officers on 70 mosques, schools and homes across Germany." SNIPPET: "Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany's interior minister, banned one Salafist network, Millatu Ibrahim, for "working against our constitutional order and against understanding between peoples". He also announced an investigation into two other networks, Dawa FFM and "The True Religion", with a view to a seeking additional bans."" SNIPPET: "Secret intelligence gathered by police and anti-terrorism officers across Europe gave "cause for concern" in Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Austria,...

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Canadian Luka Rocco Magnotta, who allegedly videotaped the murder of his lover and mailed his body parts, has been captured in a Berlin Internet cafe, according to the Berlin Police Department. A man in an Internet cafe spotted Magnotta about 2 p.m. in Germany and recognized him as the Canadian fugitive, Berlin Police spokesman Thomas Neuendors told ABCNews.com.

The 23-year-old photograph is a stunning record of Chinese courage past and an insight into China's present political turmoil. Unless China's government chooses liberty and just law over tyranny and crony corruption, the picture prefigures a bloody future history. I am referring to one of 1989's most famous photos: the lone Chinese protestor in Beijing's Tiananmen Square who stands in front of a People's Liberation Army (PLA) main battle tank. The dramatic confrontation occurred June 5, 1989, the day after PLA gunfire, at the order of Communist leader Deng Xiaoping, killed some 2,000 demonstrators in the square. Everyone in China...

Photographer Stefan Koppelkamm first photographed East Germany in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall but before the reunification. He revisited the same locations a decade later, and rephotographed them from exactly the same viewpoints to document the drastic social and economic transformations that came about during the time between the photos.

A far-right group in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is running a 'Muslim cartoon contest' and plans to display the works outside mosques. The move has alarmed authorities which fear it could incite violence and hurt German interests abroad, similar to the backlash that followed the 2005 publication of cartoons in Danish newspapers. The German government has voiced concern that far-right activists in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia may incite violence with plans to hold a so-called "Muhammad cartoon contest" and to stage demonstrations outside mosques in the run-up to a regional election there on May 13.

"Senate Hs Committee Report Finds Online Jihadist 'Activity' Leads To Violent Islamist Extremism" by Anthony Kimery 02/28/2012 ( 9:12am) SNIPPET: "Violent Islamist extremists use the Internet to recruit, radicalize and mobilize individuals -- including Americans -- and “the threat of violent Islamist extremism has become increasingly decentralized and its messaging has followed that same trajectory,” according to a report issued Monday by both the majority and minority staff of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs." SNIPPET: "The report concluded that “the United States currently has a haphazard approach to dealing with global Internet radicalization and propaganda,” and...

"A Lebanese suspect from the Hezbollah group has been taken into custody by Thai officials and police are investigating further," Chalerm Yoobamrung told Reuters. "Following concern raised by the Israeli embassy about a possible attack by a group of Lebanese terrorists in Bangkok, Thai police officials had been coordinating with Israeli officials since before the New Year."

A friend alerts us to a woman clearly ahead of her time. According to the Telegraph, a Mrs. Berliner-Mauer, of Sweden, recently revealed that she "tied the knot" with the famous wall while visiting Berlin in 1979. The blissful creature-to-creature ceremony was conducted "before a handful of guests." Clearly biased in its reporting, however, the Telegraph castigates the woman as having a "bizarre fetish for inanimate objects." Objectum-Sexuality, to be regressively clinical. But please: Bizarre? What's truly bizarre is the newspaper's own embrace of Objectosexophobia. Shame! Shame on all objectosexophobists! No doubt "wall friendly" New York and California stand ready...

(...) The delegates, many of them former East German Communists but also younger people, will debate an extraordinary motion put forward by some members: They want their party to declare that the building of the wall was an inescapable necessity. If that leaves any doubts about the Left party’s nostalgia for a wall that imprisoned 17 million people for nearly 30 years, a newspaper survey published this month by The Berliner Zeitung showed that 75 percent of that party’s supporters in Berlin thought the wall was justified or partly justified. (...) Respondents said the wall was necessary to stop the...

Addressing the ceremony on Bernauer Street, famously divided by the Wall and now site of a memorial, Mayor Wowereit said the capital was remembering the "saddest day in its recent history". "It is our common responsibility to keep alive the memories and pass them on to the next generation, to maintain freedom and democracy and to do everything so that such injustices may never happen again," he said. At a ceremony at a former crossing-point, President Wulff said the wall had been "an expression of fear" of those who created it.