 | | | | | | | Newsletter | 05.10.2008, 16:15 UTC | | | Newsline | | | World news: international | | | | | | | | | News | | | | | Current Article | | | | Merkel scrambles to salvage rescue plan for embattled German bank.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the government would not allow the troubled German mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate to "become a crisis for the entire banking system." Officials from the German government, central bank and financial regulator met on Sunday after a 35-billion euro deal to rescue HRE collapsed. Speaking at a joint news conference in Berlin with Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, Merkel said managers at financial institutions should be held accountable for what she termed irresponsible behaviour. Steinbrueck said the government was working on an "institution specific solution" for HRE. Hypo Real Estate was the first blue chip German company to seek a government rescue package after being sucked into the global financial turmoil due its exposure to massive bad debt. |  | | EU leaders say no common finance bailout fund
Europe's four biggest economies have agreed to work together to address the current global financial turmoil but say they will not form a joint bailout fund. The leaders of Germany, Britain, Italy and France, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, made the announcement at the end of an emergency mini-summit in Paris on Saturday. France had floated the idea of a 300-billion-euro European fund to rescue troubled banks but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU states must take responsibility at a national level for the banking crisis. Merkel said she did not want German taxpayers contributing to a common fund. The summit came ahead of a meeting of the Group of Eight finance ministers in Washington next week. | | | Russia removes checkpoint in Georgia
European Union observers say Russian forces have removed their first checkpoint from Georgia near the rebel region of South Ossetia. A spokesman for the EU monitoring mission said their observers saw that a checkpoint northwest of the town of Gori had been dismantled. Russian forces are due to withdraw from buffer zones around South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, by October 10 under an EU-brokered peace deal. Russian forces pushed into Georgia in August to repel a Georgian military effort to regain control of South Ossetia. Moscow said it was protecting its citizens in the region from Georgian aggression, but Tbilisi accused Moscow of having provoked the conflict in order to cement control over the region. | | | 11 killed in northern Iraq suicide bomb.
Up to 11 people have been killed after a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest during a US raid in northern Iraq. According to the US military six women and children were among those killed during the operation targeting a wanted man in Mosul. The statement said that US forces had exchanged fire with armed men as they entered the building but that all the Iraqis, including the suicide bomber, were killed in the explosion. Mosul is considered to be the last urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq. | | | UK officer says Afghan victory impossible
The UK's top military commander in Afghanistan has said in an interview that decisive military victory over the Taliban is impossible and that the radical Islamist group may be part of a long-term solution for the country. The Sunday Times newspaper quoted Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith as saying that NATO forces were not going to win the war. He said the allied forces had to concentrate instead on reducing the conflict to a level of insurgency that could be managed by the Afghan army. The newspaper also quoted the British commander as saying that a deal with the Taliban might be on the table. | | | Jung seeks better legal protection for German soldiers in Afghanistan
German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has called for better legal protection for German soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. Jung told the 'Bild am Sonntag' newspaper that the soldiers risked a lot in the interest of security in the war-torn country. He said they should not have to face any legal disadvantages in certain difficult situations. The representative of the armed forces in the German parliament, Reinhold Robbe, had recently criticised the lack of adequate legal security for Bundeswehr troops. The criticism came after a soldier had been asked to pay for a lawyer to represent him following the reported inadvertent killing of three Afghan civilians at a checkpoint in August. | | | Palin says Obama friendly with terrorists
US Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has accused Democratic candidate Barack Obama of associating with terrorists. Palin told supporters at a fundraiser in Colorado on Saturday that Obama was "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country". She was referring to William Ayers, a member of a 1960s militant group who placed bombs at the Pentagon and the Capitol, who supported Obama's first run for public office in 1995. The Obama campaign described Palin's guilt-by-association attack as "desperate and false". The escalation in the war of words between the rival White House camps comes one month ahead of the vote and at a time when the Republicans are trailing in the polls.
| | | Deutsche Telekom chief apologizes for data theft
The chief of Germany's Deutsche Telekom has apologized for the theft of personal data of millions of its customers. In an interview with a German newspaper, Rene Obermann described the theft of information, including phone numbers and addresses of some 17 million customers of the company's T-Mobile unit, as an ''annoying incident''. On Saturday, the German telecom giant confirmed a media report that the data was stolen in 2006. The company said it had immediately reported the theft to state prosecutors as well as federal investigators.
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