German

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

BERLIN — If it seems to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the world is against her, she may be right. Her insistence that debt-ridden European nations cut their way out of financial crises helped cost her conservative political party two state elections this month, exposed her to criticism as an inflexible taskmaster across the Eurozone and unleashed a torrent of anti-austerity venting that has toppled like-thinking national and regional leaders in France, Greece, Italy and elsewhere.

BMW has been striving to reconcile its dueling images for years. Best known for its luxurious, sport-oriented cars, the German manufacturer's motorcycles are only beginning to shed their reputation as wheels for safety-conscious old men, thanks to exciting new bikes like the S 1000 RR and K 1600 LT. At this weekend's International Motorcycle Shows event in Long Beach, BMW is likely to confuse its image even further when its first scooters make...

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Renowned baritone championed German lieder Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, 86, a renowned baritone who led a worldwide revival in popularity for German lieder, died in his sleep Friday at his home in the southern German city of Starnberg, his family said. The respected interpreter of classical art songs and opera performed for more than five decades primarily on European stages while also touring worldwide and recording extensively. He became best known for his renditions of songs by Franz Schubert and Gustav Mahler.

Re "Merkel to Make German History as Chancellor," Oct. 11. Just when I had digested the idea of a German pope ruling the Vatican, Germany elects its first woman chancellor, Angela Merkel. Mother Courage comes to the people. Let's celebrate the liberation of Berlin: Burn the French bras, free bratwurst and beer, move the Reichstag down the sweet Rhine to Cologne where the scent of this woman will change the destiny of the European Union forever. MIKE NALLY Garden Grove

An East German couple and their 6-year-old child crossed the Baltic Sea in a rubber boat during the night to reach the West German coast unharmed, border police said Tuesday.

Fire at the Hanover fairgrounds caused at least $500,000 damage to the pavilion of a computer company but injured no one, police said.

Tom Cruise has defied expectations and won favorable reviews from German critics for his portrayal of a Prussian army officer who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944 in the film "Valkyrie." German reviewers who were initially highly suspicious have warmed to the film, describing it as a serious work, and Cruise has overcome unease about his suitability for the role. " 'Valkyrie' is neither scandalously bad nor the event of the century. Neither is it the action thriller we feared, but it is a well-made and serious film," said public broadcaster ZDF. Initially, Germans balked at the prospect of Cruise, star of blockbusters such as "Top Gun" and "Mission: Impossible," playing Col. Claus von Stauffenberg.

The former chairman of a West German firm alleged to have helped Libya make a suspected chemical weapons plant has been arrested, the Mannheim prosecutor's office said. A spokesman said Juergen Hippenstiel-Imhausen of the Imhausen chemical company was seized in the town of Bochum on suspicion of offenses against export laws. Imhausen-Chemie and several other West German firms are under investigation on suspicion of evading export laws to help Libya build a factory at Rabta. Libya has said the plant will make only medicines, but the United States and other Western governments believe it was designed to make poison gas. Hippenstiel-Imhausen resigned in March, saying he hoped this would help to clear up the affair.

A top Palestinian official said Sunday that a West German relief worker reported kidnaped in the southern Lebanese port of Sidon will probably be freed soon. Zeid Wehbeh, the Palestine Liberation Organization representative in Lebanon, told Visnews television news agency that the man, whom he named as Marcus Quint, "will maybe be in our hands in a few hours." He said Palestinian groups were doing their best to find the 24-year-old Quint, reported kidnaped Thursday with two other West German workers for the ASME-Humanitas relief agency.

When Didier Drogba's penalty kick hit the back of the net in Munich's Allianz Arena on Saturday, giving Chelsea a 4-3 win over Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League final, David Engelberg leapt to his feet in a bar half a world away and pumped his fist. Engelberg then quickly surveyed the room and noticed he was the only one standing — indeed, he was the only one smiling — and quietly sat back down. Celebrating a Munich loss in a faux German beer hall, it turns out, is bad form.

PARIS - France's new president, Francois Hollande, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have opposing ideas of how to solve Europe's crippling public debt crisis - she austerity, he spending and growth - so a clash was in the cards Tuesday. Instead, Hollande's welcome to Berlin just hours after he took office was brisk but warm, even if he was late for dinner. Hollande - whose initial flight to Berlin was hit by lightning, causing him to briefly return to an air base outside Paris to switch planes - and Merkel met for an hour before dining together.

DUESSELDORF, Germany — Voters in Germany's most populous state dealt a decisive blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union on Sunday, preliminary results show, a potentially ominous preview of things to come for the chancellor in next year's federal elections. Merkel's party mustered about 26% of the vote in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a drop from 35% in 2010 and 45% in 2005, the year she took office, the results show. The opposition Social Democrats and Greens, at about 39% and more than 11%, respectively, secured the majority of seats they needed to form a governing coalition.

TEL AVIV - With the acquisition this month of a sixth German-made submarine, Israel is seeking to position itself as the region's undisputed naval powerhouse. From spying on enemies to intercepting illegal arms shipments to blockading the Gaza Strip, Israel's naval capabilities are playing a more prominent role in the nation's security. The latest advanced German sub, with a price tag of more than $500 million, is Israel's most expensive piece of military equipment. The subs - which are believed to be fitted with nuclear weapons - also provide Israel with a second-strike capability designed to discourage surprise enemy offensives.

PARIS - Exuberant supporters were still out celebrating Francois Hollande's election as president of France when the first fissures began opening up in the Franco-German motor that drives the rest of Europe. Although officials on both sides of the Rhine vowed to continue their close political cooperation, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a blunt rejection Monday of Hollande's pledge to renegotiate a Europe-wide fiscal treaty to rein in public debt. Nor would she countenance deficit spending to boost the economic growth that Europe so desperately needs, pouring cold water on another of Hollande's campaign promises.

Ducati, the famed Italian maker of luxury motorcycles favored by celebrities and the rich, is being acquired by Volkswagen AG's Audi division for $1.1 billion. The Ducati purchase would add to the German automaker's premium motorsports lineup. Audi also owns Bugatti and Lamborghini, the latter of which hired former Ducati North America Chief Executive Michael Lock in March. "Ducati is a great brand name that probably could use a lot more cash to grow it out of the motorcycle niche," said Bill Nation, owner of the second largest U.S. Ducati dealership, Pro Italia, in Glendale.

I want to thank you for the wonderful article on German cooking ("Children of Catherine the Great: the Germans From Russia," June 25). What a surprise to suddenly see a recipe for beerocks. It was so exciting to read another family's history so similar; my family's origin was from White Russia also. They traveled to settlements in South America and Canada and then finally settled in Oregon and Washington around 1910. My German grandmother passed away several years ago, and as with other families, the recipes were lost with her. I had tried on several occasions when I was a girl to get her to recite to me everything she did and added to the bowl, but when trying to cook from my old notes with a pinch of this and that, not much turns out right.

There is a straightforward explanation for the success of German automobile sales in Japan that Sam Jameson failed to disclose in the article "Germans Taking the Inside Track in Car Sales to Japan" (Feb. 4). The explanation is Europe 1992, for unlike the naive United States, the Germans routinely make trade a quid pro quo proposition. You can be sure that German bankers made it obvious to their Japanese counterparts that if Japan expected to be a trading partner with post-1992 Europe, they had better open their domestic market to German manufactured goods.

The Times' editorial on Tuesday discussing Israel'sreaction to Gunter Grass' poem on a possible confrontation with Iran prompted reader Steven Zak of Sunland to write: "The Times argues that by 'overreacting' to Grass' poem, Israelis 'are acting like Iranians.' More accurately, The Times is acting like Grass, who defames Israel as a 'perpetrator' of 'recognized danger.' The Times does likewise by comparing Israelis with Iran's regime. "When Grass calls the established fact of Iran's weapons program 'unproven,' he sounds like the Iranians, who both deny the Holocaust and vow to repeat it. Anyone who thinks Israel's condemnation of such a man is 'the kind of reaction we'd expect from Iran's mullahs' is ignorant about how those mullahs deal with dissent.

The people in Israel and Germany who are most outraged by Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass' latest work have one thing in common: They think it's ridiculous, and possibly anti-Semitic, for Grass to assert a moral equivalency between Israel and Iran. Yet by overreacting to Grass' criticism, Israeli officials are acting like, well, Iranians. Grass, 84, is being lambasted in his native Germany over his poem "What Must Be Said," published last week in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.