Chancellor Angela Merkel

BERLIN (Reuters) - Allies of the United States must follow its lead and boost their troop levels in Afghanistan, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday. President Barack Obama is expected to announce on Tuesday that he will send an additional 30,000 troops to help stabilize Afghanistan, where violence has surged to its deadliest levels since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. The New York Times reported on Thursday that Obama was also seeking about 10,000 additional troops from NATO allies, but was unlikely to get more than half that number. Speaking at a news conference in Berlin after talks with German Chancellor ... Read Full Story

The head of Germany's armed forces has resigned over allegations of a military cover-up following a Nato air strike in Afghanistan that killed dozens of civilians. General Wolfgang Schneiderhan's resignation caps a deeply embarrassing episode for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government over the country's policy in Afghanistan. The 4 September bombing of two oil tankers in the northern Afghan town of Kunduz caused carnage, and was the deadliest incident involving German troops since the Second World War. At first the German Nato forces, which had ordered the attack, claimed that all those killed in the incident were insurgents, although later the government in ... Read Full Story

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday she was expecting a "comprehensive thank-you letter" from General Motors for huge loans to keep the auto maker's Opel unit afloat, which she said had now been repaid. "I can tell you that the last funds (received by) General Motors have been paid back, which means that the Opel operation has not cost the German taxpayer a cent," Merkel said in a speech in Berlin. She added with a smile that she expected "a comprehensive thank-you letter from General Motors in a few years," a comment that prompted cheers from the crowd of business leaders she was addressing. ... Read Full Story

General Motors has repaid the 1.5 billion euros (2.2 billion dollars) in bridging loans it received from Germany to keep its troubled European unit Opel afloat, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday. "I can tell you that the last funds (received by) General Motors have been paid back, which means that the Opel operation has not cost the German taxpayer a cent," Merkel said in a speech in Berlin. She added that she expected "a comprehensive thank-you letter from General Motors in a few years." And she defended her decision to offer the huge loan to the US firm, saying: "It was absolutely right ... Read Full Story

A panel of top German economists, which has slammed the country's huge public debt, says Chancellor Angela Merkel's new government should take back its "gift baskets" of tax relief, a German weekly reported. Merkel "promised us that the government would do everything so that our gloomy forecasts would not happen... They can therefore pack up again their beautiful gift baskets," Wolfgang Franz, head of the so-called "Five Wise Ones", told Der Spiegel in the issue to be published Monday. The influential panel of economists has forecast growth of 1.6 percent for 2010, which it says is not enough to replenish the public coffers. Two ... Read Full Story