For 28 years it had stood as the symbol of the division of Europe and the world, of Communist suppression, of the xenophobia of a regime that had to lock its people in lest they be tempted by another, freer life -- the Berlin Wall, that hideous, 28-mile-long scar through the heart of a once proud European capital, not to mention the soul of a people. And then -- poof! -- it was gone. Not physically, at least yet, but ...

This is the typical day of a relatively typical soul in today's diversified world. I wake up to the sound of my Japanese clock radio, put on a T shirt sent me by an uncle in Nigeria and walk out into the street, past German cars, to my office. Around me are English-language students from Korea, Switzerland and Argentina -- all on this Spanish-named road in this Mediterranean-style town. On TV, I find, the news is in Mandarin; today's baseball ...

The scene was Allied press headquarters in Paris on a rainy summer day. Facing the half-dozing correspondents, Lieut. Colonel John A. Keck, onetime Pittsburgh engineer and now chief of Allied technical intelligence on German weapons, began quietly: "This will make Buck Rogers seem as if he lived in the Gay '90s." He proceeded to unfold the improbable story of what German scientists were up to when V-E day interrupted them. At a research center in Hillersleben a group of them ...

In 1944 a 15-year-old boy was taken from his home in Sighet, Hungary, and sent to a Nazi death camp. This spring, after a joint resolution of Congress, President Reagan will present him with a gold medal at the White House "in recognition of his humanitarian efforts and outstanding contributions to world literature and human rights." There can be no longer journey than the one Elie Wiesel, 56, has taken from a cell in Auschwitz to the corridors of Washington. ...

Beyond the broad smiles, the jokes about Hillary Clinton's wardrobe, and the ceremonial reassurances that accompanied German Chancellor Angela Merkel's three-day visit to Washington this week, there was a clear message that President Barack Obama expects Germany to demonstrate leadership with NATO and in Europe. Considering the context — Tuesday's love fest on the White House lawn — Obama was outspoken in urging his guest to take more responsibility in Libya, saying that he expected full and ...

After first sending Spain's agricultural industry into a tailspin by falsely accusing that country's cucumbers, German authorities on June 5 pointed a finger of blame at local beansprouts — specifically the produce of an organic farm in the village of Bienenbttel, around 70 kilometers south of Hamburg — as the source of an outbreak of deadly E. Coli infections. But the next day, the Ministry of Agriculture of Lower Saxony, which includes Hamburg and Bienenbttel, declared that ...

Harry S. Stonehill resembles the kind of character that the late Sydney Greenstreet used to play in all the old Warner Bros, beaded-curtain thrillers. A blunt, beefy Chicagoan who changed his name from Steinberg in 1942 because "German names at that time weren't very popular," Stonehill built up a $50 million business empire in the Philippines. "Every man has his price," said Harry Stonehill, and in the Philippines after World War II he found that the going rate was fairly ...

German authorities are urging consumers not to panic as an outbreak of a virulent strain of enterohemorrhagic E. coli known as EHEC has killed at least 14 people, with no sign of abating. The bacterial outbreak — which was first reported on May 20 in northern Germany — is believed to have infected around 1,200 people, but officials fear it hasn't yet reached its peak. After scientists in the north German port city of Hamburg traced the ...

Even before Dominique Strauss-Kahn announced from New York's Riker's Island prison on Wednesday that he was stepping down as head of the International Monetary Fund , world powers were already jostling over who could replace him. Indeed, since Strauss-Kahn's arrest last Saturday on charges of attempted rape, European officials have been swift to argue that Europe should maintain the hold it has had on the IMF's top job ever since the Washington D.C.-based organization was created in 1945. Europeans, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, say ...

Ending a trial that had dragged on for almost 18 months, a court in the south German city of Munich on Thursday convicted 91-year-old John Demjanjuk of being an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews at the Sobibor concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and sentenced him to five years in prison. The presiding judge, Ralph Alt, said the court found that Demjanjuk served as a Nazi guard at the camp in 1943 and, as such, played ...