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Prosecutors say a fire at a hospital in western Germany last week in which two people died was caused by a patient pouring disinfectant over herself and setting it alight in an attempt to kill herself. The fire broke out in the 69-year-old woman’s 6th-floor room at the Bergmannsheil hospital in Bochum in the early hours of Friday. She died in the blaze, along with a bedridden 41-year-old man in a neighboring room. …

It’s the end of an era as the last car rolls off the production line at Opel’s Bochum factory, making Friday a bitter day for the city and the factory’s 3,000 workers. […] The last vehicle made in Bochum, an Opel Zafira compact van, will not be sold but will be dedicated to social work with details expected to be announced by the company on Friday. Opel, a subsidiary of General Motors, is shutting down its former flagship factory due to overcapacity. In its heyday, the Bochum plant employed 22,000 people. Now, it will only employ 700 to make auto...

Anti-Nokia opinions gathering momentum in Germany Public exhorted to avoid buying Nokia handsets in the wake of Bochum closure decision Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia is running into heavy weather in Germany, as a veritable national movement is beginning to rise against the decision earlier this week to close the Nokia handset assembly plant in Bochum on the Ruhr. An anti-Nokia campaign is being put together with considerable alacrity. The decision to shut down the plant and move production to Romania threatens directly to put more than 2,000 people out of work, with a further two thousand jobs in jeopardy as...

BERLIN (AP) — A 27-year-old Turkish woman was charged in Germany Friday with belonging to an outlawed terrorist organization dedicated to toppling Turkey's government, German prosecutors said. The woman, identified only as Sebil K., is believed to be a leader in Germany of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Front, also known as DHKP-C, which aims to turn Turkey into a Marxist state. The group has claimed responsibility for the assassinations of generals, policemen and government officials and has targeted U.S. military and diplomatic missions. DHKP-C was banned as a terrorist organization in Germany in 1998. At the time, prosecutors said they...