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Prosecutors have said that Islamists arrested in Berlin and western Germany on Thursday may have been planning an attack on the capital. [...] There are conflicting reports in the media about what the exact target of the attack was, with tabloid Bild citing investigators who say it was Alexanderplatz, the iconic center of the former east of the capital. Berlin daily Tagesspiegel meanwhile, says popular tourist spot Checkpoint Charlie - once the most famous crossing in the Berlin Wall - was to be hit, citing security sources. [...] Security sources told DPA the group's ringleader was a 35-year-old Algerian arrested...

Daylight checkpoints

BERLIN - Workers on Tuesday began removing a field of crosses at Berlin's former Checkpoint Charlie after a privately run museum lost a court battle to keep the memorial to people killed at the East German border during the Cold War. Workers in blue overalls began unscrewing the 1,067 crosses after covering the plaques with the victims' names and carrying them away. "No, no, you have to listen to me," said museum director Alexandra Hildebrandt, imploring the court bailiff without effect as workers arrived at the site and began work. Several hundred protesters jeered and whistled derisively in the rain...

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- The museum at the former Allied Checkpoint Charlie, a front-line outpost of the Cold War, is stepping up its campaign to raise funds to save a memorial to people killed trying to escape communist East Germany, the director said Tuesday. The privately run museum has until July 5 to raise €36 million ($43 million) to purchase the land where it erected the memorial in October -- a rebuilt section of the Berlin Wall and crosses representing the 1,067 people the museum says were killed at the border from 1961 to 1989. The museum had been leasing...

Berlin Outrage: Checkpoint Charlie Monument to be Bulldozed July 4th We didn't think it could get much worse in Germany...well, it just did. Davids Medienkritik recently learned that the Berlin city government, made up of a coalition between the SPD (Gerhard Schroeder's Social-Democrats) and the PDS (former SED party that ran Communist East Germany), has decided to allow the razing of the Checkpoint Charlie monument by court order. And get this: The monument, which consists of over 1,000 crosses adorned with the names of those murdered attempting to escape Communist East Germany for freedom, will be bulldozed on the 4th...

A German court has ordered a private museum to tear down a controversial memorial to the Berlin Wall. The memorial - a rebuilt section of the wall - was erected last year at the site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the border crossings into old East Berlin. The Berlin state court upheld a demand by the bank which owns the land for the monument to be removed along with more than 1,000 crosses erected there. They are supposed to represent those who died trying to cross the wall. The head of the group that put up the memorial at the...

THE Berlin Wall, once the hated symbol of a divided Europe, is being rebuilt in the centre of the German capital, drawing cries of outrage from those who remember the trigger-happy guards and snarling dogs that patrolled its perimeters.Only about 200 yards of concrete is going up — and there are no plans to lay minefields — but the plan has provoked a fierce debate among Berliners about the limits of remembrance. Alexandra Hildebrandt, who is heading the project, knew that her idea would be controversial. One in four Germans recently told opinion pollsters that they favoured a new Berlin...

They spent 40 years trying to tear it it down, but a German artist now wants to rebuild the entire Berlin Wall for its 45th anniversary in 2006, coinciding with the city holding the football World Cup. Christof Blaesius, an events manager based in Cologne, has been working for three years to raise the €25m (£18m) he says it will take to rebuild a 29-mile plastic copy of the Berlin Wall across the city. Mr Blaesius said: "The World Cup shows all nations can communicate and cooperate with each other while the wall separates. Today there are still several divided...

'Booze It & Lose It' Yields 1,137 DWI Arrests in Second Week; Lawler Family to Recall Kill Devil Hills Tragedy at Outer Banks Event 7/9/03 5:00:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Jill Warren Lucas of the Governor's Highway Safety Program, 919-733-3083, (cell: 919-291-6729), jwlucas@dot.state.nc.us News Advisory: What: "Booze It & Lose It" Press Event When: 10:30 a.m. Thursday, July 10 Where: Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer's patrol car was damaged in a hit-and-run crash caused by an impaired driver following a "Booze It & Lose It" enforcement event. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg...

<p>NAJAF, Iraq — The Battle of the Najaf Agricultural Institute has taken a horrifying turn. The institute, a large educational complex on this city's southwest edge, is near what has become known as Checkpoint Charlie. Every night, Iraqi fighters sacrifice a man to get a fix on the U.S. Army position so they can strike with rockets or mortar shells.</p>