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Below are the headlines by German Language press on Palin's speech: ___________________________________________________ Sarah Palin - Pitbull mit Lippenstift Sarah Palin, Pitbull with lipstickUS-Wahlkampf Die kühle Sarah Palin schießt gegen Kritiker zurück US Elections Wars: The collected (cool) Sarah Palin fires back at critics Sarah Palin: Konservative Wunderwaffe mit Risikopotential Sarah Palin: Super weapon carries some riskUS-Wahl: “Vize” Palin elektrifiziert Republikaner US Elections: "Vice" Palin electrifies the RepublicansAngriff der Hockey Mom (Attack of the Hockey Mom) Eine "Super-Mom" will US-Vizepräsidentin werden A super-mom wants to become the US Vice-PresidentSarah Palin – Wunderfrau aus der Wildnis Sarah Palin: Wonder woman from the...

The planned construction of over 180 mosques in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society. ... the media reported "turmoil" and an "enraged" audience in a school auditorium in Ehrenfeld, a district of the German city of Cologne. The mood was almost comparable to that of the protest gatherings once held against nuclear missiles or reactors. Instead the outrage was directed at a huge mosque planned for the area. Still, the words used by the project's opponents called...

Holy Trinity Closing, But Welcoming Doors Not Opening – Yet No German, Latin Masses for Displaced Parishioners; Reopening of Homeless Program Delayed BOSTON – June 26 – On Sunday, June 29, Holy Trinity parishioners will hear for the first time the decree that formally closes the 164-year-old South End parish effective the following day, June 30. Despite the short interval between the formal announcement and the closure, parishioners will immediately appeal the decision to Cardinal Sean O’Malley. The decree, signed early this week but yet to be formally read, will designate the Cathedral of the Holy Cross as the welcoming...

BERLIN (Reuters) - The leader of Germany's Jewish community said on Friday she was surprised Pope Benedict could have allowed a new version of a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews. Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Reuters Television she could not fathom Pope Benedict putting forward the new decree because he experienced discrimination against Jews in Germany as a young man. "I would have assumed that this German pope, of all people, had got to know first hand the ostracizing of Jewry," she said. "I could not have imagined that this...

Stolen Nazi gold may be in German cavern Last Updated: 3:11am GMT 20/02/2008 Treasure hunters claim they have may have found a haul of looted Nazi gold said to be part of a Russian collection that was dubbed the "eighth wonder of the world" before it was stolen. The resting place of the Amber Room treasures was reportedly made at the weekend near the German village of Deutschneudorf. Tests showed a man-made cavern 20 metres below ground that contained a large amount of precious metals. Treasure hunter Christian Hanisch [left] and Heinz-Peter Haustein at the site where the gold is...

BERLIN - It was an American, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who famously reflected that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away." But the phrase seems to apply better to the quiet passing of a German believed to have been the country's last World War I veteran. Erich Kaestner died Jan. 1 in a nursing home in Cologne at the age of 107, his son told The Associated Press. When France's second-last surviving veteran from World War I, Louis de Cazenave, died Jan. 20, the news made international headlines. But in Germany — which lost both world wars and has had...

Buried With Honors Written by Dava Guerin After years of debate, a new veteran’s cemetery in Bucks County will be finally built. America’s heroes can now come home. “Caught in the action of kill or be killed, no greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his brother.” These were the words that singer Kris Kristofferson said in his opening to the song by country music artists, Big & Rich entitled, “The Eighth of November.” It was a ballad about a Vietnam veteran, Niles Harris, whom the two singers met in a bar, and they were...

BERLIN: Two newborn girls were mixed up at a clinic in southwestern Germany and went home with the wrong parents, and doctors are now trying to correct the mistake, authorities said Friday. The incident occurred at the St. Elisabeth clinic in Saarlouis this summer. It only recently came to light, however, after one of the fathers took a paternity test, area councilwoman Monika Bachmann said. His wife then took a test and it was confirmed that she was not the girl's mother, according to a report in the top-selling Bild newspaper. The clinic is now trying to find out who...

Expert on American Indian culture teaches class at Ramstein High RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — A blond German isn’t exactly who you would expect to be the guest speaker for Ramstein High School’s Native American Heritage Month. But on Wednesday, Peter “Forest Wolf” Heiser, a German who owns a moving company in Idar-Oberstein, spoke to three history classes on American Indian heritage and culture.Bryan Sanchez, who describes himself as belonging to the Zuni tribe in New Mexico, had asked Heiser to speak to the classes. Sanchez, coordinator of the school’s internship program, says he believed Heiser had a better feel...

Crooked German church leans more than Pisa By Nick Britten and Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor Last Updated: 8:37pm GMT 05/11/2007 A crooked German church steeple has knocked the leaning tower of Pisa from the Guinness book of Records as the world’s most leaning building. The tower in the village of Suurhusen in northern Germany applied in June for the title and this week had it confirmed that it had beaten the famous landmark in Pisa. Guinness Book of Records officials confirmed it is leaning at a 5.19 degree angle compared to the 3.97 degree of the tower of Pisa. The...

BERLIN (AFP) - German conservationists on Monday condemned the freeing of some 17,000 minks from a fur farm, apparently by animal rights activists, saying they would starve in the wild. "It was a political act, and it has nothing to do with protecting the environment," said Joern Ehlers from the German chapter of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). "These animals are going to die of hunger." Minks are carnivores who feed on small animals and those freed from the farm in Grabow, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Berlin, risked disturbing the ecological balance in the region,...

Aging German playboy Rolf Eden has rarely taken no for an answer. And he's not about to start. He has filed charges against a 19-year-old for refusing to sleep with him. The complaint? Ageism.

US tip-off foiled German bomb plot, reports say Jess Smee in Berlin<>br Saturday September 8, 2007 The Guardian (UK) A tip-off from US intelligence helped to foil the terror bomb plot in Germany, it emerged yesterday. "The first piece of hard evidence on the bomb plot against American military and airbases in Germany was transmitted to the German authorities from American intelligence officials," Rolf Tophoven, director of the German institute for terrorist research and security policy, said. US satellite systems picked up on electronic contact between Pakistan and Germany more than 10 months ago, he said. "From then on, the...

German town wants its own Great Pyramid By Bojan Pancevski in Berlin, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007 The pharaohs may have set the standard, but German entrepreneurs are hoping to challenge Egypt's pre-eminence in monumental self-indulgence by building the world's largest pyramid. The pyramid of tombstones planned at Dessau They have secured €90,000 (£61,000) in state funding to assess the feasibility of building a 1,600ft tall "Great Pyramid" near the town of Dessau, in the impoverished east German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Like the original Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, this would be a place of burial. But...

AUSTIN --Although stories of der Cowboy and die Stinkkatze mayno longer get told in Texas, Germanic linguistics professor Hans Boas wants to make sure nobody forgets them.Boas, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, is the founder and manager of the Texas German Preservation Project. Every month or so Boas ventures forth from his campus office in Austin to small towns like Boerne, Fredericksburg and Crawford to conduct interviews with the dwindling number of old-timers who speak the odd mixture of English and 19th-century German.It's a dialect unique to the Lone Star State, and most of the 8,000 or...

A German woman who was kidnapped at gunpoint from a restaurant in the Afghan capital Kabul has been released. Reports say Christina Meier was freed during a police raid on a house on the outskirts of the city, and a number of her suspected abductors were arrested. Earlier, the aid worker was seen in a video released by her captors and broadcast on Afghan TV. A German foreign ministry spokeswoman said the aid worker was now at the German diplomatic mission in Kabul. The BBC's Charles Haviland, in Kabul, says the house that was raided on Sunday night had apparently...

Kidnapped German freed in Kabul Mrs Meier appeared in a video hours before her release A German woman who was kidnapped at gunpoint from a restaurant in the Afghan capital Kabul has been released. Reports say Christina Meier was freed during a police raid on a house on the outskirts of the city, and a number of her suspected abductors were arrested. Earlier, the aid worker was seen in a video released by her captors and broadcast on Afghan TV. A German foreign ministry spokeswoman said the aid worker was now at the German diplomatic mission in Kabul. The BBC's...

A German woman has been kidnapped at gunpoint in the heart of the Afghan capital, Kabul. Reports say she was at a restaurant with her partner when armed men walked in and took her away. Officials said the woman, the first foreigner kidnapped in the city in more than two years, works for an international aid organisation. The incident comes amid efforts to free 19 South Korean aid workers kidnapped by the Taleban in central Afghanistan. The kidnapping took place at 1300 local time (0830 GMT) at a centrally located restaurant, hidden from the main road. Rare kidnappings The interior...

German farmer demands cash for lost bodies By David Harrison, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:35am BST 12/08/2007 A German farmer is refusing to allow British families to recover the remains of crew members of a Lancaster bomber shot down during the Second World War - unless they pay him €7,500 (£5,080). The families of the crew are furious at the farmer's demands and are refusing to pay. They say that the farmer, Horst Bender, must not be allowed to make a profit from allowing them to give their dead relatives a proper burial with full military honours. One relative described...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three hundred chickens died in panic early on Sunday when a drunken German teenager on a joyride crashed a van into their shed, police said. "Apparently some of the chickens were so desperate to get away that they ran into the wall and died," the spokesman said. "Others suffered heart attacks." The 17-year-old from the western city of Kassel crashed the van through the wall of a shed containing around 1,000 birds and then returned to a nearby fairground where he was staying, according to a spokesman for the local police. The youth was arrested.

BERLIN - Germany's national railway wasn't about to risk sending a trainload of soccer fans to a German Cup match without beer. Federal police said Monday that the beer tap failed aboard a special train carrying Bayer Leverkusen fans to Hamburg on Saturday. The fault was discovered half an hour into the journey. "In order not to endanger the good mood" of the passengers, railway officials halted the train in Wuppertal for 25 minutes and had a replacement part delivered by taxi, a police statement said. It added that there was no trouble among the fans. Their team was less...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police broke into a darkened flat fearing they would find a dead body after neighbours complained of a nasty smell seeping out onto the staircase. The shutters of the apartment had been closed for more than a week and the post-box was filled with uncollected mail. But instead of a corpse police found a tenant with badly smelling feet asleep in bed next to a pile of foul-smelling laundry, police in the south-western town of Kaiserslautern said on Sunday.

Next to a famous Christian landmark Muslims intend to construct their huge mosque, one of the largest in Europe. The Germans should nix this project now. Per the London Daily Telegraph from Cologne, “the construction of one of Europe's biggest mosques near a globally famous Christian landmark has sparked a furious dispute in Germany.” There sits the Cologne Cathedral. Now the 2,000-seat mosque is to be towering via twin minarets skyscraping 170 feet upward. "’Muslims have been here for 40 years, yet people are praying in back rooms,’ said Seyda Can, an Islamic theologian at the Turkish Islamic Union in...

Human Rights in the European Union are brutally raped by German law and widely ignored by their political elites and NGOs. Video fully exposing hypocrisy of “European solidarity” to which German goverment so often refer to. http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=8039592869205719612

Drudge is currently flashing a story about an imminent terror threat against German citizens in the country. This morning, the State of Alabama was the announced winner of a $4 billion steel mfg. plant to be located in Mobile, Al by German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp. There was supposed to be a press conference and public announcement with Governor Riley and the CEO and other representatives of ThyssenKrupp. About an hour ago, traffic was temporarily halted on I-85 West in Montgomery as approximately 50 police cars and motorcycles passed by along with 1 Humvee. Information is locked up tight, and none of...

Police in Germany had to call in a locksmith to break into jail when the lock on a cell broke, trapping a prisoner inside, authorities said on Wednesday. Police in the Bavarian town of Zwiesel, near the Czech border, locked up the 18-year-old at the police station after he was accused of smashing a car window during May day festivities on Tuesday. Officers planned to send the youth home the following morning, but could not open the door because of the broken lock. "We told him we'd get him out of there," said a spokesman for local police. "We said...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A drunken man who fell under a train after being jolted out of a nap at a railway station emerged unscathed from beneath the locomotive. The 19-year-old had fallen asleep on the station platform in Cologne but was startled by the incoming train. Losing his balance, he fell in front of the locomotive, police said. "According to the man he fell exactly between the two tracks and just felt a light knock on the head," Cologne police said in a statement. The shocked train driver pulled the emergency brakes only to see the man emerge unaided from...

A video aired on German TV has shown an army recruit on firing practice being ordered to pretend he was in New York's Bronx facing hostile African Americans. In the grainy 90-second video, the instructor tells the soldier to swear as he fires his gun. US civil rights leader, Al Sharpton, said it was outrageous to depict blacks as "target practice". New York officials say they are saddened and frustrated that the Bronx district is depicted so negatively. "Clearly these folks don't know anything about African-Americans or the Bronx," said Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrion Jnr, who recently returned from...

BERLIN — A German army instructor ordered a soldier to envision himself in New York City facing hostile blacks while firing his machine gun, a video that aired Saturday on national television showed. The president of the Bronx, the New York City borough that the army instructor referred to in his directions to the soldier, demanded an apology from the German military and said the clip "indicates that bias and assumptions and racism is alive and well around the world."

The German Army sent a draft notice to a four-week-old baby named Lucio, ordering him to report for duty within the next 10 days, before realising it had blundered. An army spokesman said the notice had been sent erroneously because a clerk typed in the wrong date of birth for the boy from Aubstadt, in southern Germany. "It was an accident," an army spokesman said. "Somebody entered the wrong number into a computer. There was no harm done. "We realised the error the same day and called up the family to tell them to throw the notice away when it...

E German towns 'left to poverty' By Harry de Quetteville in Hoyerswerda Last Updated: 1:10am BST 09/04/2007 After two decades of promises to revitalise its former communist east, Germany has abandoned swathes of the ex-GDR to poverty and depopulation, a scathing new report has revealed. The trend, which has seen hundreds of thousands flee westwards from the neglect, is so bad that the old communist east is now studded with "ghost towns", it says. The report, released late last month and called the Future Atlas 2007, is the most detailed examination of 439 towns and regions in Germany, and shatters...

German MPs raise retirement age German MPs voted 408 to 169 in favour of the measure The German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, has voted to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67. Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, and on current trends the population aged over 65 will almost double to 30% by 2035. The plan means that anyone born in 1964 or later will have to wait until they are 67 to collect a state pension. It is expected to be approved by the upper house, the Bundesrat. It will be phased...

German brother and sister are challenging the law against incest so that they can continue their relationship free from the threat of imprisonment. Patrick Stübing, an unemployed locksmith, and his sister Susan have had four children together since starting a sexual relationship in 2000. Three of the children are in foster care, and two have unspecified disabilities. The couple, who live near Leipzig, grew up separately and only met many years later. Their supporters say they will fight until incest is no longer regarded as a criminal offence, arguing that the law is out of date. They say it harks...

German push for US missile talks The US says it does not need a Nato green light for the shield Germany says the US should include its Nato allies in discussions on the possible deployment of a missile defence shield in Europe. The German Defence Minister, Franz Josef Jung, said "we should discuss developing such a defence measure within a Nato framework". The US is negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic over the deployment of a radar and 10 missile interceptors. Russia has condemned the US plan and says it is developing new missiles. Mr Jung said Russia's concerns...

Oslo - A German naval minesweeper ran aground off the Norwegian coast in the early hours of Wednesday, reported rescue services authorities in the city of Stavanger on Norway's south- western coast. According to the report, none of the vessel's 42 sailors were in danger at any time. The ship was participating in naval exercises when the accident occurred owing to a 'navigational error,' the Norwegian authorities said. The ship was due to be freed during high tide.

BERLIN - A court paroled a one-time leader of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction Monday after 24 years in prison, amid bitter memories of the left-wing terrorist group's attacks on law enforcement and business leaders, which plunged the country into fear three decades ago. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, is to leave prison March 27, the first day she becomes eligible for release, the Stuttgart state court ruled. Her case has set off a public debate about whether it is time to show mercy to those who showed none to their victims and has made Germans relive a tense time when their...

Russian authorities were accused of turning the clock back to Stalinist times yesterday after a group of human rights activists was found guilty of having an "unsanctioned" afternoon tea party with two Westerners. Pro-democracy groups immediately condemned the ruling — the first made under internationally criticised legislation passed last year to restrict the freedoms of civil society — as an attempt by the Kremlin to stifle free speech in Russia. Nine members of Froda, a group that campaigns for ethnic minority rights, were found guilty of holding an illegal meeting and fined after they had tea with two German students...

German leader says no to headscarf BERLIN, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel opens a tour of four Arab countries on Saturday but she's reportedly not packing a headscarf. Saudi law says that Saudi and foreign women may only appear in public wearing a headscarf and a long black garment. But, Germany's most powerful woman, who is following the lead of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, plans to appear in Riyadh with her hair uncovered -- and wearing a pants suit. "The times have changed, foreign guests are not obliged to wear the headscarf any more," a...

HAMBURG, Germany - A Moroccan convicted as an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was sentenced Monday to the maximum 15 years in prison, minutes after telling the son of a woman killed that day "my future is ruined." A federal appeals court convicted Mounir el Motassadeq, a friend of three of the suicide pilots, in November of knowingly helping the hijackers and sent the case to a state court in Hamburg for sentencing. Just before Monday's verdict, the 32-year-old defendant spoke with an American whose mother died on board one of the planes that crashed into...

In 2000 Plastic Logic, a Cambridge-based start-up company, announced it was attempting to commercialise a form of plastic electronics that had developed from research at the laboratory. By using a cheap and simple set of processing operations to build up layers of circuitry on plastic “substrates” – the material on which circuits are formed – rather than silicon wafers used in conventional microchips, the developments promised to slash the cost of making semiconductors. What has given the science behind the company more substance is today’s announcement that Plastic Logic has attracted $100m (£51m) of investment that will fund a plant...

Confused Tourist Lands in U.S., Not Australia BERLIN (Dec. 29) - A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometres away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site. Tobi Gutt planned on flying from Germany to sunny Sydney, Australia, left. He mistakenly booked a ticket to snowy Sidney, Montana. Big Sky, Montana, is shown at right. Dressed for the Australian summer in t-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany Saturday for a four-week holiday. Instead of arriving "down under," Gutt found himself on a different...

BOSTON – December 23 - Known as the Christmas Parish for introducing New England and the country to many Christmas customs brought here by German immigrants during the mid-1800s, including the ever-popular decorated pine Christmas tree, Holy Trinity Church in Boston's South End may be celebrating its last Christmas in 2006. A plan to merge Holy Trinity with the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and move the Latin Mass to Mary Immaculate of Lourdes parish in Newton Upper Falls was announced on November 26, 2006. Since Holy Trinity was originally scheduled for closure in May 2004 as part of the...

The church that parishioners call the “Christmas Parish” is preparing to celebrate what may be the last holiday season there this year. The Archdiocese announced recently that it would proceed with plans to close the Holy Trinity (German) Catholic Church on Shawmut Avenue, which, according to church lore, introduced the idea of Christmas trees to Boston. No specific date of closure was given and the church will be open through Christmas — but beyond that, no one seems to know. “We are proceeding as if we will always be here, that’s exactly how feel,” said Dolores Miller, a longtime parishioner...

Defense Minister Amir Peretz spoke to his German counterpart Franz Josef Jung on Wednesday evening and vehemently denied reports that the IAF had shot on a German naval vessel off the Lebanese coast. Likewise, the IDF Spokesperson's Office released a statement saying unequivocally that "contrary to reports, the IDF did not fire at a German warship." Earlier, the German Defense Ministry reported that it was investigating an incident in which two IAF fighter jets allegedly fired shots and dropped flares near a German warship patrolling the Lebanese coast as part of a peacekeeping force. The second Lebanon war: JPost.com special...

Two Israeli warplanes and a German navy vessel have clashed off the Lebanese coast, the Defense Ministry in Berlin said on Wednesday without giving further details. Germany daily Der Tagesspiegel earlier on Wednesday quoted a junior German defense minister as telling a parliamentary committee that two Israeli F-16 fighters flew low over the German ship and fired two shots. The jets also released infra-red countermeasures to ward off any rocket attack, the paper quoted him as saying. The minister did not say when the incident happened or what had caused it, the paper said. "I can confirm that there was...

ATHENS, Greece - Greek military divers Friday successfully raised the wreckage of a German World War II Stuka bomber from the sea off the eastern island of Rhodes, the air force said. The Junkers-87 dive-bomber was shot down in 1943 and will be conserved and displayed at the air force museum at an airport near Athens, air force spokesman Col. Ioannis Papageorgiou said. Papageorgiou said there was no trace of the two airmen's bodies. "The plane was raised a couple of hours ago, and I don't know yet whether there are any remains inside," he told The Associated Press. He...

BERLIN -- One of Germany's foremost opera houses has abruptly canceled a modern production of Mozart's ``Idomeneo" because of fears of a violent reaction to a scene showing the severed head of the Prophet Mohammed. The cancellation, at the urging of security officials, triggered a furious debate over freedom of expression. Muslim groups in Germany voiced satisfaction with the decision, while leading politicians and artists called it a cowardly surrender to religious extremists. ``This is crazy," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told reporters yesterday during an official visit to Washington. ``This is unacceptable." The cancellation comes three weeks after Pope Benedict...

Muslim figures elsewhere also continued to assail the Pope's comments, with one Turkish politician quoted as comparing him to the World War II dictators of Germany and Italy, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. “How can (the Pope) imply that Muslims are the creators of terrorism in the world while it is the followers of Christianity who have aggressed against every country of the Islamic world?” prominent Saudi cleric Salman al-Odeh said. “Who attacked Afghanistan and who invaded Iraq? ... The Pope's statements are an attempt to put a religious cover on injustice and political aggression practised by the American administration...

Munich - Pope Benedict XVI, 79, arrived in his Bavarian homeland Saturday, entering the city of Munich to begin a six-day programme of preaching and prayer, combined with an emotionally- charged tour of well-remembered places from his earlier life. Police kept a watchful eye on the crowd that packed the city's central Marienplatz square for a welcome home and prayers at the foot of the Pillar of Mary, a 368-year-old monument to the Virgin Mary. Until he left in 1982 to become the Vatican's top doctrine official, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich, and he was to stay the...

German bomb plot intended for World Cup: paper Fri Sep 1, 2006 3:14pm ET BERLIN (Reuters) - Two failed attempts to bomb trains in western Germany in July had originally been planned for the football World Cup, a newspaper reported on Friday. The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung cited security sources as saying interrogation of the suspects had established that the would-be bombers had abandoned the original plan as they had considered the implications of such an attack. One of the bombs was found in July on a train in Dortmund, which hosted some of June and July's World Cup matches. The...