Jewish groups on Wednesday rejected as inadequate an apology by Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone for remarks in which he praised German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. During an interview with The Times newspaper last week the billionaire spoke of the Nazi dictator's ability to "get things done." But after a storm of criticism, Ecclestone issued a statement on Tuesday in which he said: "I unreservedly apologize for the remarks I made regarding Hitler in a recent interview. I am ...

Pope Benedict XVI, on the eve of a global economic summit, lashed out at modern capitalism for being shortsighted and short on ethics. "Today's international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise," the pontiff said in his third encyclical letter, "Charity in Truth," which was released Tuesday. The papal letter was released as the heads of leading industrialized nations started gathering in central Italy for the Group of Eight economic ...

Thousands of fans poured in to Los Angeles en route to the public memorial service at the Staples Center arena, while Jackson's family and closest friends attended a private gathering at the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn cemetery before going on to the memorial downtown. In Germany, thousands of Jackson fans have been offered the chance to watch events in Los Angeles live at Berlin's O2 World arena. Organizers of the event dubbed "Trauerfeier," (translated as Sadness Party) said ...

With Germany going to the polls in a general election in three months, authorities are on high alert after detecting an increase in online warnings of terrorist attacks targeting the country. The German government held high-level talks with top security and intelligence chiefs in Berlin on Thursday to discuss the growing threat posed by Islamic extremists and to coordinate counterterrorism measures. Intelligence officials are alarmed by the rising number of videos posted online by militant Islamists who say they ...

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a key architect of the U.S. war in Vietnam under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, has died at age 93, according to his family. McNamara was a member of Kennedy's inner circle during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war. But he became a public lightning rod for his management of the war in Vietnam, overseeing the ...

Every night at 11 p.m. the village of Dörentrup in central Germany is thrown into total darkness. For the past few years, the village's cash-strapped local council has been switching off all the streetlights in the village each evening until 6 a.m. the following morning. In most places, a nightly blackout would provoke outrage as residents find themselves fumbling and stumbling their way home through the dark. But in Dörentrup, they have seen the light, with a new scheme ...

The flight data recorders from a Yemenia Airways crash were possibly located off Comoros on Wednesday, a day after a jetliner with 153 people aboard went down in the Indian Ocean, a French official said. "It seems like the 'black boxes' have been localized, but are not very accessible, according to information we obtained this morning. But they have been localized," Alain Joyandet, a French junior foreign minister told CNN affiliate BFM TV in a phone interview from Comoros. The ...

The airline operating an Airbus A310-300 jet that crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday with 153 people aboard was being monitored by EU authorities, according to France's transport minister. Dominique Bussereau told French television that inspectors in his country had also noted several faults on the doomed Yemenia Airways plane, Agence France-Presse reported. "The company was not on the blacklist (of airlines banned from European airspace) but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to ...

One year before the FIFA World Cup kicks off, 26 teams of gay and lesbian footballers are battling for global supremacy in the Gay Soccer World Championships. Co-ordinated by the International Gay & Lesbian Football Association (IGLFA), the tournament, which began on Sunday, is being hosted by the Federal Triangles club in Washington D.C., and supported by the local Major League Soccer (MLS) side D.C. United. IGLFA spokesman Michael Pranikoff told CNN that the competition has been running annually since ...

On June 15, the German army's General Wolfgang Schneiderhan found himself in front of an audience of politicians and senior officers defending military policy — on sleeping bags. Many German soldiers "are whingeing to high heaven," Schneiderhan said at a reception thrown by the parliamentary army ombudsman, complaining about everything from being sent on yet another overseas tour of duty to the "unsuitable" sleeping bags they are given for their deployment in the Congo. Then Schneiderhan did some complaining ...