Deutsche Welle English Service News 23. 09. 2005, 17:00 UTC ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Germans have voted, but political parties are not scrambling to find a majority in parliament to form a governing coalition. Get all the news and background analysis on DW-WORLD'S election site: www.dw-world.de/election05 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD: Germany Set For Grand Coalition Christian Union leader Angela Merkel said Friday that talks with Greens leaders about a possible coalition failed. That means a grand coalition between conservatives and Social Democrats is most likely. To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1719611,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hurricane evacuees killed in bus fire A bus carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita has caught fire killing up to 20 passengers. The bus was engulfed with flames on an Interstate highway near Dallas congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast. Dallas television station WFAA reported 20 persons were killed. A spokesman for Dallas County sheriff's office said first indications point to a mechanical problem as the cause of the fire. Meanwhile more than one million people have been fleeing parts of the southern US states of Texas and Louisiana as Hurricane Rita continues to approach the Gulf Coast. The hurricane is expected to make landfall within the next 24 hours. Texas Governor Rick Perry has asked President George W. Bush to deploy 10,000 federal troops to the state to assist in search and rescue efforts after Hurricane Rita strikes. German conservatives meet with Greens In Germany, the uncertainty continues over who will lead which government after Sunday's inconclusive election. The leaders of the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party say they will be holding no further talks with the Green Party for the time being. CDU leader Angela Merkel said exploratory talks with Greens leaders in Berlin had confirmed that there was little common ground between the conservatives and the environmentalists. Reinhard Buetikofer of the Greens said the talks had served to underline the parties' differences. Both Merkel and incumbent social democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder say they won Sunday's vote,- but the fact remains that neither yet appears capable of forming a viable coalition government. Man arrested in airport security alert British police have arrested a man carrying a suspicious package on the tarmac at northern England's Manchester aiport. When the man tried to resist arrest, officers used a stun gun to detain him. An army bomb disposal unit subsequently investigated the package before destroying it in a controlled explosion. Police have not released details about its contents. The incident led to the temporary closure of the terminals. Earlier, one of the suspected bombers in the failed July 21st attacks on London's transportation system appeared before magistrates in the British capital. Ethiopian native Hussain Osman, arrived in Britain on Thursday after losing his appeal against extradition from Italy. Wiesenthal funeral held in Israel Simon Wiesenthal, the man known as the Nazi hunter, has been buried in Israel. Wiesenthal died at his home in Vienna on Tuesday at the age of 96. His body was laid to rest after a service in the town of Herzliya. Wiesenthal survived several concentration camps. After the war he devoted himself to locating war criminals and collecting evidence against them. His work led to the prosecution of more than a thousand Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Final Solution. Khodorkovsky lawyer told to leave Russia A lawyer for billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky says the authorities have revoked his visa and ordered him to leave Russia immediately. This comes just hours after a Moscow court threw out Khodorkovsky's appeal against his conviction for fraud and tax evasion. Canadian lawyer Robert Amsterdam told news agencies that FSB state security officers turned up at his Moscow hotel on Thursday night. They annulled his visa and gave him 24 hours to leave the country, or face arrest. During the trial, Amsterdam argued that the prosecution of Khordokovsky was engineered by the Kremlin to scupper his ambitions of running for political office. EU softens hardline stance on Iran The European Union's so-called "big three" have backed down from their demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency immediately report Iran to the UN Security Council. Diplomats from Germany, Britain and France said the shift came after strong opposition from Russia and China. The EU three are now reportedly proposing that the IAEA only implicitly threaten Tehran with such action. Iran is accused of developing nuclear weapons,- an allegation it denies. Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna remain deadlocked over how to deal with Iran's nuclear programme. Belarus bomb blast injures 30 At least 30 people have been injured after a bomb went off in the town of Vitebsk in Belarus. The country's ministry for emergency situations said the device went off near a restaurant late on Thursday. Most people were hurt by flying pieces of metal. The explosion was the second of its kind in Vitebsk where two people were wounded in a blast last week. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bundesliga is in full swing again! Get it all on DW-WORLD.DE: We offer you results, tables and live tickers of the matches. Check out picture galleries of the best players and interactive features such as quizes and betting games where Chinese Bayern Munich fans get a chance to compete against Texan Schalke supporters. You'll find it all at www.dw-world.de/soccer ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information please turn to our internet website at http://dw-world.de/english Here you'll find out what's happening in Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. News and background reports from the fields of current affairs, culture, business and science. And of course the DW website also has information about DW-RADIO and DW-TV programmes: topics, broadcast times and frequencies. You can even listen to all programmes as audio-on-demand. Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
