Daily News Channel
Nobody can blame Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn for smiling this past week. VW has just turned the tables on would-be raider Porsche, placing Europe’s biggest carmaker in the driver’s seat for a planned merger with the much smaller and sportier firm. And while colleagues at rivals like Daimler, Fiat, General Motors and Peugeot are busy trying to survive the current economic storm, Winterkorn seems poised to throw VW into high gear.
A 23-year-old man was arrested Sunday in the death of a former "American Idol" contestant, who was struck by a car in New Jersey, authorities said. She wasn’t yet three days old when she experienced her first revolution.
It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who walks away from a job with a check for €50 million .
Like white picket fences and perfectly manicured lawns, garden gnomes — those colorful residents of front yards the world over — are icons of the suburban ideal: quaint, cheerful and totally inoffensive. But in Germany, one little gnome is stirring up big trouble
Somali pirates released a German cargo ship Saturday that they have held since May, the German Foreign Ministry said.
With Germany going to the polls in a general election in three months, authorities are on high alert after detecting an increase in online warnings of terrorist attacks targeting the country. The German government held high-level talks with top security and intelligence chiefs in Berlin on Thursday to discuss the growing threat posed by Islamic extremists and to coordinate counterterrorism measures. Intelligence officials are alarmed by the rising number of videos posted online by militant Islamists who say they are specifically targeting Germany.
Hundreds of Egyptians took part Monday in the funeral of Marwa Sherbini, an Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death last week in the German city of Dresden in a crime believed to be racially motivated. Sherbini, 33, was stabbed to death Wednesday in a courtroom as she prepared to give testimony against a German man of Russian descent whom she had sued for insult and abuse. The man, identified in German media as Alex A., 28, was convicted of calling Sherbini, who wore a headscarf, “terrorist,” “bitch” and “Islamist” when she asked him him to leave a swing for her 3-year-old son Mustafa during an August 2008 visit to a children’s park.
Over the past few days, the German luxury automaker Porsche has moved into high gear with the launch of its latest model, the Panamera, a 4-door, 4-seater sedan that it hopes will reverse flagging sales and maintain its status as the world’s most profitable auto maker. But even as the motoring press descends on Stuttgart to test drive the new car, the Panamera launch is being overshadowed by a bizarre feud in the company’s founding family that is starting to damage both Porsche and its sister company, VW. It’s a nasty, vindictive battle that, in keeping with bad cases of sibling rivalry, risks spiraling out of control and hurting everyone involved, including the shareholders, customers and workers at the two German automakers.
On June 15, the German army’s General Wolfgang Schneiderhan found himself in front of an audience of politicians and senior officers defending military policy — on sleeping bags. Many German soldiers “are whingeing to high heaven,” Schneiderhan said at a reception thrown by the parliamentary army ombudsman, complaining about everything from being sent on yet another overseas tour of duty to the “unsuitable” sleeping bags they are given for their deployment in the Congo. Then Schneiderhan did some complaining of his own, noting the tendency for his officers to delegate blame, with no-one taking responsibility for their actions.
Germany is summoning the Iranian ambassador Monday to explain the disputed presidential election in the Middle Eastern nation, particularly the "brutal handling" of protesters, the German foreign minister said. The move is noteworthy because global reaction to the Iranian election has been guarded.