German Police

German police said Thursday they would examine whether Michael Jackson committed a crime by dangling his baby from a fourth-floor hotel window in Berlin in front of fans. "We are examining if there is cause to open an investigation into whether a crime was committed," said Berlin police spokeswoman Christine Rother after the incident was captured on film and then widely broadcast in Germany and around the world.

The U.S. Air Force says two of its airmen have been killed and two wounded in a shooting outside Frankfurt airport. Spokeswoman Maj. Beverly Mock said German police have the suspect in Wednesday afternoon's shooting in custody and that she could not release any further details on the victims until their next of kin have been notified. The gunman opened fire on a bus carrying the airmen as it sat outside Terminal 2 at the airport, Frankfurt police spokesman Manfred Fuellhardt said.

West German police commandos on Friday stormed a hijacked bus, freeing two hostages and capturing two drunken gunmen who had demanded money, beer and a plane to Brazil, a spokesman said. One of the four hostages was slightly hurt Friday when a gunman struck him with his pistol butt. A 60-year-old woman was released early in the drama and another passenger escaped during a stop.

A Baltimore man has been extradited to Germany to face charges that he raped and murdered a 19-year-old woman near where he worked on a U.S. military base 25 years ago, police said. Robert Brown, a 49-year-old maintenance worker, was turned over by U.S. marshals to Hesse state police and flown to Germany on Sunday, German police said. A judge ordered him to remain in custody pending formal charges. Brown is accused of the 1984 rape and murder of Nicola Stiel, a German teen from the western town of Bad Kreuznach.

West German police officials said Monday they have smashed an international drug ring that smuggled about 615 pounds of heroin into five European countries in recent years. Police said the ring made 12 heroin shipments in recent years to France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, police said. The Federal Criminal Office said the ring's suspected mastermind, 41-year-old Turkish national Bekir Gueltas, is still on the run. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

Police on Friday sealed off a nuclear processing plant where authorities investigated reports the operator broke an international treaty by shipping weapons-grade nuclear material to Libya and Pakistan. Authorities said the international police organization, Interpol, and the Swedish government also were looking into reports the alleged shipments passed through Sweden.

A masked man who held 10 hostages at gunpoint in a German bank was shot to death by a police marksman Saturday, ending a 22-hour siege, officials said. He had earlier demanded, and received, a ransom of $5.9 million, believed to be the highest ever paid in Germany, prosecutor Manfred Roesner said. The man, using his captives as human shields, came out of the bank at this city near Cologne to inspect a getaway car he had demanded.

The tear gas is stocked and the police are helmeted and ready for tens of thousands of anarchists and anti-globalization protesters who are planning rallies and guerrilla-inspired mischief to disrupt the upcoming Group of 8 summit in this Baltic Sea resort.

Reeling from the shock waves of a right-wing arson attack that claimed the lives of three Turkish residents early Monday, the German government launched a series of measures Tuesday aimed at combatting the growing horror of political extremism.

German authorities announced Friday that they are searching for suspects in a failed terrorist plot involving propane bombs concealed in suitcases that were timed to explode simultaneously on two regional trains in western Germany. "We are now working on the basis that this was the work of a terrorist group ... and was an attempt to kill a large number of people," federal prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum said at a news conference in Wiesbaden.

German police boarded a plane minutes before takeoff and arrested a pair of ethnic Somalis who they say wrote a suicide note proclaiming their desire to fight in a holy war and die in a terrorist attack. A 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old Somalia-born German were removed from a KLM flight to Amsterdam at Cologne-Bonn Airport. Officials said they did not think the men planned to hijack the plane. An airport spokesman said the pair were unarmed.

In the final days, the Turkish Muslim and the two German converts are said to have schemed and ranted like men on the verge of exploding. During clandestine meetings, including ones at the mountain village hide-out where they allegedly began assembling bombs, Adem Yilmaz, Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider talked nearly nonstop about potential bombing targets and suicide attack scenarios, German law enforcement officials say.

Sporadic violence erupted Saturday in this port city as radicals, their faces hidden by hoods and bandannas, broke from a largely peaceful anti-globalization protest and attacked police with sticks, bottles and Molotov cocktails ahead of this week's summit of leading industrialized nations. Authorities said 146 police officers were injured, 25 of them seriously; 78 demonstrators were arrested or taken into temporary custody.

The tear gas is stocked and the police are helmeted and ready for tens of thousands of anarchists and anti-globalization protesters who are planning rallies and guerrilla-inspired mischief to disrupt the upcoming Group of 8 summit in this Baltic Sea resort.

Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Hanover as experts disposed of three World War II-era bombs, German police said. The American-made bombs were dropped in an Allied raid in October 1943 and were found with the help of aerial photos. All were embedded as deep as 21 feet. A fire service spokesman said one of the bombs had smashed on impact and was harmless. The other two were defused.

German authorities announced Friday that they are searching for suspects in a failed terrorist plot involving propane bombs concealed in suitcases that were timed to explode simultaneously on two regional trains in western Germany. "We are now working on the basis that this was the work of a terrorist group ... and was an attempt to kill a large number of people," federal prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum said at a news conference in Wiesbaden.

Sporadic violence erupted Saturday in this port city as radicals, their faces hidden by hoods and bandannas, broke from a largely peaceful anti-globalization protest and attacked police with sticks, bottles and Molotov cocktails ahead of this week's summit of leading industrialized nations. Authorities said 146 police officers were injured, 25 of them seriously; 78 demonstrators were arrested or taken into temporary custody.

A German citizen's alleged abduction by U.S. officials on the mistaken suspicion that he was an Islamic militant has riveted the new government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and led to a strong denial Wednesday by the Foreign Ministry of German complicity in the affair. The case of Khaled Masri, a car salesman of Lebanese descent, has complicated Merkel's plans to improve relations with Washington.

German police arrested two suspected Al Qaeda members Sunday, accusing them of planning attacks in Iraq and trying to purchase uranium from a dealer in Luxembourg. The men were identified as Ibrahim Mohammed K., a 29-year-old Iraqi, and Yasser abu S., a 31-year-old Palestinian from Libya. Prosecutors said the two planned to pretend that Abu S. had been killed in a car accident, then claim more than $1 million from a life insurance policy to fund a suicide bombing and other operations in Iraq.