BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel refused on Wednesday to set a date for the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan, saying that would only encourage the Taliban.

She also tried to justify to a highly skeptical public a new strategy to boost troop levels in Afghanistan and nearly double civilian aid to help create the conditions to start a withdrawal from next year.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged industrialized and emerging countries to invest more in protecting wildlife and said the U.N. should create a body to refine scientific arguments for saving animal and plant species.

Researchers say preserving nature is crucial to the fight against climate change and warn that human activity is speeding up extinctions. They also argue that peoples’ livelihoods depend on natural assets worth trillions of dollars.

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – Prosecutors accused John Demjanjuk on Tuesday of knowingly herding thousands of Jews to their deaths in the Nazi-run Sobibor extermination camp and standing by as victims screamed in fear.

Propped up under a white sheet on a mobile bed in a Munich court, the 89-year-old former U.S. carworker closed his eyes or stared into space as prosecutors charged him with helping to kill 27,900 Jews in what may be Germany’s last major Nazi-era war crimes trial.

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – For many Holocaust victims former Nazi guard John Demjanjuk’s trial provides perhaps one of the last big opportunities to expose to public scrutiny the crimes committed in World War Two death camps.

The trial of Demjanjuk, 89, on charges he helped to force 27,900 Jews into gas chambers at Sobibor camp in 1943 started on Monday under the international media spotlight. He has denied involvement in the Holocaust.

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old former Nazi camp guard, is due to stand trial on Monday on charges of helping to force 27,900 Jews into gas chambers in 1943.

Demjanjuk is expected to appear in a wheelchair before a packed court in the southern city of Munich at what is likely to be Germany’s last major trial from the Nazi era.

BERLIN (Reuters) – John Demjanjuk suffers from bouts of mental absence and will enter court in a wheelchair on Monday to fight charges of helping to kill 27,900 Jews in the Holocaust, the 89-year-old’s lawyer said.

His victims’ families insist he must face justice.

In what is set to be Germany’s last big Nazi-era war crimes trial, all eyes will be on the Ukrainian-born former U.S. auto worker who fought in the Red Army before being captured by the Nazis and recruited as a concentration camp guard.

BERLIN (Reuters) – For thousands of former employees of Communist East Germany’s loathed Stasi secret police, next week’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is no cause for celebration.

While the city hosts world leaders for festivities to mark the end of Europe’s Cold War, a generation of ex-Stasi cadres will be trying to forget the night euphoric East and West Berliners danced on the Wall and fell into each others arms.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Protestants on Wednesday elected Margot Kaessmann, a divorcee and the Lutheran bishop of Hanover, to lead them, the first woman to take the post and only the third woman to head a major Christian church.

Kaessmann, 51, a regular on television talk shows and known in the media as the “pop bishop,” was considered something of a controversial candidate to lead Germany’s roughly 25 million Protestants because she is divorced.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel signaled on Monday she would resist pressure for radical reforms from her likely new coalition partners, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), and stick to a path of gradual change.

In Sunday’s federal election, Merkel’s conservatives won a parliamentary majority with the FDP, her partner of choice, which brings to an end her awkward four-year partnership with the Social Democrats (SPD).