BERLIN (Reuters) – The United States has dropped out of the “top 20″ in a global league table of least corrupt nations, tarnished by financial scandals and the influence of money in politics, Transparency International said on Tuesday.

Somalia was judged the most corrupt country, followed by Myanmar and Afghanistan at joint second-worst and then by Iraq, in the Berlin-based watchdog TI’s annual corruption perceptions index (CPI).

The United States fell to 22nd from 19th last year, with its CPI score dropping to 7.1 from 7.5 in the 178-nation index, which is based on independent surveys on corruption.

This was the lowest score awarded to the United States in the index’s 15-year history and also the first time it had fallen out of the top 20.

In the Americas, this put the United States behind Canada in sixth place, Barbados at 17th and Chile in 21st place.

Jointly heading the index — in which a score of 10 indicates a country with the highest standards, and 0 as highly corrupt — were Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore with 9.3. They were also at the top of the table last year.

Somalia scored 1.1. The watchdog group said its table was based on “different assessments and business opinion surveys carried out by independent and reputable institutions.”

STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) – Protests over a new high-tech rail project in a hub of German industry have pitted the ruling elite against an unlikely coalition of engineers, punks and even a masked woman with deer antlers on her head.

The demonstrators in central Stuttgart against a plan to redevelop the city’s train station have become a common sight in a local campaign that has swelled into a broad protest movement threatening to engulf Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.

Since demolition work on parts of the 80-year-old station began this summer, tens of thousands have turned out week upon week to vent their frustration about the project, energizing the Baden-Wuerttemberg state capital and dominating news coverage.

Known as “Stuttgart 21,” the 4.1-billion-euro ($5.8 billion) plan has divided the carmaking center, home to Porsche and Daimler, becoming a symbol of corruption, environmental decline and lack of political accountability to opponents, and a vision of progress and technological prowess to its supporters.

Violent stand-offs have turned it into a referendum on the ruling class and hit support for Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) ahead of an election next March in the wealthy southern state that her conservative party has governed nearly 60 years.

“The CDU is going down,” said Fritz Bender, a 66-year-old retired engineer and one-time CDU voter, who, along with many other demonstrators, plans to vote for the Greens.

Smiling broadly at one of the regular rallies by protesters, who are seen by some as left-wing counterparts to the American conservative Tea Party movement, Bender said the passion that the cause has inspired made him proud to be from Stuttgart.

By Dave Graham

STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters Life!) – Spend a couple of hours overdubbing a scene from Star Wars for a laugh, post it online, and you may end up with so many work offers that you’ll wish you were in outer space. Just ask Dominik Kuhn.

Since Kuhn spent “two hours, at most” one morning redubbing a tiny part of the popular science fiction film and uploaded it onto video sharing website Youtube, marketing executives have flocked to hire him — even though he was making fun of them.

What started out in 1977 as Darth Vader and the commanders of the Death Star discussing the threat from Luke Skywalker’s rebel alliance had 30 years later become a boardroom dispute over an unnamed Stuttgart firm’s new advertising strategy.

The two-minute clip “Virales Marketing im Todesstern Stuttgart” (Viral Marketing in Stuttgart Death Star) went on to rack up millions of hits online, turning Kuhn’s life upside down, he told Reuters in the southern German city.

“People always said that stuff I did on the side was just bullshit. Now that bullshit is what I make a living from,” said Kuhn, 41, whose previous career spanned everything from advertising to translating science fiction books.

Kuhn, a fan of English comic Ricky Gervais, describes “viral marketing” as “word of mouth marketing for the internet age” — which also helps explain much of the video’s success.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Iran is showing increased readiness to resume talks about its disputed nuclear programme but has not indicated any willingness to make compromises yet, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Friday.

Western powers hope the imposition of tougher U.N., U.S. and European sanctions since June on Iran, the world’s No. 5 oil exporter, will persuade it to enter serious negotiations and ultimately agree to curb uranium enrichment.

Following talks in Berlin with Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Westerwelle said Iran was still flouting the demands of the international community regarding its nuclear programme.

“We’ve not been able to ascertain any substantial changes in the Iranian position, but we are certainly picking up new signals about their readiness to talk,” he said, adding that only time would tell whether this would produce results.

There have been no substantive discussions since late 2009, but European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told Reuters in late September that talks between Iran and six world powers involved in diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute could take place “in the next few weeks.”

Iran, which denies any nuclear arms ambitions and dismisses the impact of sanctions, said one of its officials may meet a representative of the powers in October.

Iran says its uranium enrichment is meant to generate electricity at a future network of nuclear power plants.

By Dave Graham

DUMFRIES, Scotland (Reuters Life!) – When Heinz Roestel was separated from his younger sister Edith aged six, he little thought it would be nearly 80 years before he saw her again.

Nor did the German ex-soldier expect that when he did, he would be lying in a Scottish hospital bed using an interpreter to communicate because he had forgotten his native tongue.

Parted when their mother died, Heinz gradually lost all contact with Edith after he joined the Wehrmacht as a teenager, was captured in the Netherlands and finally ended up in a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp in Scotland in 1945.

Originally from Hindenburg — now Zabrze in southern Poland — Roestel is one of thousands of POWs who stayed in Britain after the war because they fell in love, found work or lost their homes when Germany’s eastern border was shifted west.

Historians say the integration of the POWs, who included Manchester City goalkeeping legend Bert Trautmann, helped heal the wounds of the war and pave the way for closer ties with continental Europe. Yet their fate has often been overlooked.

Roestel, 85, settled in southern Scotland and had given up hope of seeing Edith again by the time she tracked him down to the village of Penpont this summer. Shortly before she came over from Germany, he suffered a stroke but he still recognized her.

BERLIN/LONDON (Reuters) – A militant plot to stage coordinated attacks in Europe has been disrupted in its early stages by drone strikes in Pakistan, but it is not clear if the threat has been completely eliminated, security sources said on Wednesday.

Germany said it knew of information pointing to possible al Qaeda attacks in Europe and the United States, and intelligence sources said security agencies had disrupted plans by Pakistan-based militants for simultaneous strikes in London, as well as in major cities in France and Germany.

The conspiracy involving al Qaeda and allied militants was in the early stages and would have involved groups of assailants taking and killing hostages, possibly along the lines of the 2008 raid in Mumbai in which 166 people died, the sources said.

But it was unclear if all the plotters had been eliminated in recent attacks by U.S. drones in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and Western security agencies were working closely to counter any threat that remained, they said.

The last successful major militant attack in the West was the 2005 bombings on London’s transport system that killed 52.

Al Qaeda and south Asian militant groups have threatened to attack Western targets in retaliation for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and for the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

Intelligence sources said an increase in strikes by unmanned U.S. drone aircraft on suspected militants in Pakistan in the past few weeks was part of Western efforts to thwart the plot.

BERLIN/LONDON (Reuters) – Germany said on Wednesday it knew of intelligence pointing to possible al Qaeda attacks in Europe and the United States, and U.S. officials said Washington was working closely with its allies on terrorist threats.

Intelligence sources said security agencies had disrupted plans by Pakistan-based militants for simultaneous strikes in London, as well as in cities in France and Germany.

The plot had been in the early planning stages and would have involved small groups of assailants taking and killing hostages, the sources said. It was unclear whether all the conspirators had been eliminated in recent attacks by drones in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, they said.

U.S. security officials said they could not confirm that a plot had been disrupted. But they said they believed that the threat of a plot or plots remained.

But a British security source told Reuters: “There definitely was (a plot) as far as we know, and the American intelligence services and the agencies in those three countries mentioned have been working on it for quite a while.”

The source said the planned attacks would have involved “suicide terrorists” and resembled commando-style raids on Mumbai in 2008 in which Pakistan-based gunmen killed 166 people.

A separate British police counter-terrorism source told Reuters that no arrests had been made or were on the cards, indicating the threat was not thought to be imminent.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany said on Wednesday it was aware of intelligence pointing to threatened al Qaeda attacks in Europe and the United States, and had exchanged information with allies.

A German security source said there were “increasing rumblings” about potential attacks, but the interior ministry said there was no reason to raise the national alert level.

The comments followed a report by Britain’s Sky News that intelligence agencies had disrupted plans by Pakistan-based militants for simultaneous strikes in London, as well as in cities in France and Germany.

Citing unidentified intelligence sources, Sky said the planned attacks would have been similar to the commando-style raids on Mumbai in 2008 in which Pakistan-based gunmen killed 166 people.

Sky said an increase in strikes by unmanned U.S. drone aircraft on suspected militants in Pakistan in the past few weeks was part of Western efforts to thwart the plot, which it said was at an “advanced but not imminent stage.”

Pakistan’s army dismissed the report as “very speculative.”

Military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told Reuters: “We don’t have any information or intelligence that militants had gathered there (in North Waziristan) and were plotting attacks. There is absolutely no intelligence on that.”

By Dave Graham

BERLIN (Reuters Life!) – Four decades after recording one of the most influential German rock albums ever, Michael Rother of Neu! can finally play it live the way he always wanted to.

At the age of 60, the guitarist of the Duesseldorf duo who pioneered the controlled, linear, driving “motorik” sound that became a hallmark of the 1970s West German rock scene often called “Krautrock,” has never been in such high demand. After watching his career all but grind to a halt in the 1980s, Rother’s fortunes have undergone a marked renaissance — built on the legacy of the three albums he cut as Neu! (New) with the late Klaus Dinger on drums between 1971 and 1975.

“The workload has exploded: it’s non-stop,” Rother told Reuters in an interview after playing in Berlin. “I’m being steamrolled by everything that’s going on — in a nice way.”

“The response and the enthusiasm we’ve generated at our concerts is incredible. It’s almost like the music was created today — and hasn’t been in my head for the past 40 years.”

The interest in Neu!’s music reflects a wider revival in appreciation for records produced by German bands in late 1960s and early 1970s whose distinctive forays into garage rock, electronica and psychedelia won them many fans abroad.

Since late May, Rother and his band Hallogallo have been playing the music of Neu! to crowds across Europe and cities as far afield as Edinburgh, Mexico City and Detroit — with more dates in the offing in South America, Turkey and the Far East.

BERLIN, Sept 22 (Reuters) – Germany said on Wednesday it would move billions of euros in Hypo Real Estate HRXG.DE assets into a “bad bank” — a long awaited move that may swell its debt but which analysts said was unlikely to hurt Berlin’s standing with markets.

On Wednesday, Germany’s bank rescue fund SoFFin agreed to the transfer 191.1 billion euros worth of assets as part of a long awaited overhaul of the Munich-based lender to move 210 billion euros worth of assets off its balance sheet.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the decision by national bank rescue fund SoFFin to transfer the funds would help stabilise Germany’s financial system.

“The is a key step for the restructuring of the bank and for securing Germany’s financial stability,” he said in a statement.

The ministry said the transfer of the funds into a bad bank Brussels is likely to view as part of the public sector could cause a technical swelling in Germany’s debt/GDP level by up to 7.5-8.5 percentage points but that this was purely statistical and would not lead to extra interest payments on debt.

Germany had previously projected a debt/GDP level of 78 percent this year, rising to 80 percent in 2011 — without the HRE bad bank.

Alexander Plenk, Deputy Head of Financials Credit Research at UniCredit said the fact that the scale and timing of HRE’s bailout was well known means markets will not be spooked. “It’s not comparable in any way to the Irish situation,” Plenk said. “It marks a small step for the German banking system, but it’s a large step for Hypo Real Estate.”