A court is to hear damning claims that a German engineer played a key role in an international nuclear trafficking gang set up by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadir Khan, the news magazine Der Spiegel

Berlin - Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected Friday the suggestion that the European Union was in a crisis after the Irish rejection of the EU treaty.

Speaking to reporters at Binz on Germany's Baltic coast, Merkel said, "The situation is not an easy one. The European Union has already surmounted many difficult situations. That is why I'm quite sure that we'll find a way here to make progress."

The chancellor added that she could not yet say what a solution to the problem would look like.

Berlin - Interest was limited in the auction in the German city o

Berlin - A German court Thursday handed down a four-year jail term to a depressed landlord in the southern town of Bolsterlang who tried to blow himself up in his pub late one night last year.

The court dropped three charges of attempted murder, ruling the man had been so depressed, and so drunk, that he did not comprehend the danger to three other people in the house at the time.

The explosion, caused after the 65-year-old man opened an 11- kilogram propane bottle, wrecked the house, forcing its subsequent demolition.