Deutsche Welle English Service News December 23rd 2005, 16:00 UTC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD:
EU Budget Deal Costs Germany More Than Expected Praised as a dealmaker par excellence after engineering last week's EU budget compromise, Angela Merkel has drawn the the opposition's ire after it emerged that Germany's payments to Brussels are set to increase. To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1834806,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ONE DAY LEFT! Play DW-WORLD's Christmas Click & Win with a chance to get fabulous prizes from Playmobil! To participate, please visit our home page at http://www.dw-world.de/english ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dutch court rules in Saddam genocide A Dutch court has ruled that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein committed genocide against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s. At the same time, the court acquitted a Dutch chemicals trader of the same charges but sentenced him to 15 years in jails for complicity in war crimes. The court ruled that he supplied chemicals to Saddam Hussein's regime knowing they would be used to make poison gas. The ruling against Saddam is the first of its kind over the 1988 massacre of Kurds in the Iraqi town of Halabja. The attack, which killed more than 5,000 people in a single day, also features among the charges against the former Iraqi ruler, who is currently on trial in Baghdad. Bulgaria to pay for Libyan HIV victims In a diplomatic breakthrough, Bulgarian and European Union officials have agreed with authorities in Libya to establish a fund providing financial support to children infected with the HIV virus. The Foreign Ministry in Sofia said the step was part of an international effort to get the verdicts quashed of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death by a Tripoli court for allegedly infecting 400 children with HIV. About 50 children have died. The World Health Organisation has told Libya the patients were most likely infected with the deadly virus due to poor hospital hygiene before the foreign medical workers arrived in the country. Italy issues arrest warrants for CIA team An Italian judge has issued EU-wide arrest warrants for 22 alleged CIA agents who are suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of an Egyptian Muslim cleric. The cleric was allegedly seized by a CIA team in Milan in 2003 and later handed over to Egyptian authorities for questioning. An EU warrant is valid throughout the 25-nation bloc and does not require approval of any government. This comes against the backdrop of recent allegations that the CIA has been running a covert operation throughout Europe, using European airports to fly terrorist suspects to secret prisons for questioning. 2 US brigades to leave Iraq by April US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has told troops based in Iraq that US forces would soon begin to leave the country. Two combat brigades of up to 9,000 soldiers should be out of Iraq by next spring, he said, bringing the US troop level below 138,000 for the first time in two years. His remarks came just a day after British Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the prospect of a UK troop reduction early next year. Meanwhile the UN has said it sees no reason for a rerun of last week's parliamentary election. A spokesman said there would be no independent review of the election results which have been challenged by the opposition Sunni parties as being flawed. Germany to pay more into EU The Berlin government has admitted that as a result of the budget compromise reached at last week's EU summit, Germany will end up paying two billion euros a year more into EU coffers. A government spokesman confirmed a report in the Berliner Zeitung daily that Germany's net contribution would rise to around 10 billion euros annually. Chancellor Angela Merkel had been hailed after the summit as a key mediator in the budget talks. German defence minister leaves Pakistan Germany's Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has ended his trip to Pakistan where he signed an accord on closer military co-operation between the two countries. On his previous stop in Afghanistan he insisted that German troop strength would be maintained within the NATO-led ISAF peacekeeping force despite a planned US troop reduction. He also announced that most German Bundeswehr soldiers would be relocating from Kabul to Afghanistan's northern border region by the end of next year. Report: Labour Office wasted millions Germany's government auditing authority has complained of serious management failures at the German Federal Labour Agency. The Stuttgarter Zeitung reported Thursday that in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg alone, at least 30 million euros in unemployment benefits were paid to Turkish workers who were ineligible because they had hidden assets in the Bank of Ankara. Despite a clear warning from local authorities, the Labour Agency had refused to investigate charges of widespread fraud that may have cost German taxpayers hundreds of millions of Euros. Duma adopts controversial bill on NGOs A controversial bill restricting the activities of non-governmental organisations in Russia has been passed by the lower house of parliament. The bill had been sharply criticized by the West as a threat to civil rights. Moscow has defended the legislation as necessary for national security. The final hurdle before the bill becomes law is a vote by the upper house of parliament next week, which is almost certain to adopt the draft. Critics in Russia and abroad fear the law will be used to clamp down on the country's NGOs, one of the last independent sectors in Russia. Belgium to extradite alleged serial killer Belgium's justice ministery has approved the extradition of alleged French serial killer Michel Fourniret to France. Fourniret has been behind bars in Belgium since 2003. He faces a trial next year over the murders of seven young women - six in France and one in Belgium - committed between 1987 and 2001. His wife, Monique Olivier, was extradited to France on complicity charges in early December. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The year is almost over and it's time to take a look back at some of the most memorable stories that took place in Germany this year. 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