England`s impressive 2-1 win over Germany at Berlin`s Olympic Stadium in Wednesday`s friendly means the Three Lions keep a healthy lead over die Mannschaft in matches between the countries.

In the 31st meeting between the old rivals, captain John Terry`s late header gave England their 15th win compared to Germany`s 10 victories with six draws between the European power-houses.

Ukraine`s President Viktor Yushchenko said Wednesday that a Soviet-era famine suffered in his country was an act of genocide -- two days after Russian President Dimitry Medvedev accused him of expoiting history for poltical purposes.

Spain on Wednesday promised to help families of victims who disappeared during the 1936-39 civil war and the ensuing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco to track their remains.

ATHENS, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - Several thousand Greeks marched in Athens Saturday to commemorate the 1973 student uprising against the country's US-backed former military regime that claimed at least 44 lives.

Bearing banners against NATO and the US and chanting anti-American slogans, over 5,000 people including university students, labour unionists and left-wing youth members participated in the annual demonstration towards the US embassy.

'Long live the Iraqi resistance, and may the (American) conquerors see coffins every day,' one block of demonstrators chanted.

ATHENS, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - Thousands of police were deployed around central Athens on Saturday ahead of a march commemorating the 1973 student uprising against the country's former military regime, police said.

Over 8,000 officers have been mobilised to guard against violence that routinely erupts during the annual demonstration, which crosses the city centre and culminates at the US embassy.

Over 4,000 police have been assigned to guard embassies, foreign companies and banks that are often targeted with firebombs and paint during the march.

BEIJING, Oct 22, 2007 (AFP) - China's Communist Party on Monday promoted to its highest decision-making body two men who grew up during the Cultural Revolution when ideology ran amok and politics was rife with factionalism.

Xi Jinping, 54, and Li Keqiang, 52, were appointed to the elite nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, raising expectations they will be groomed to take over as China's next president and prime minister.

JERUSALEM, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - The Israeli spy who first revealed Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev's secret speech denouncing the crimes of his predecessor Joseph Stalin has died, the daily Haaretz reported.

Polish-born Wiktor Grajewski was an Israeli Cold War hero, whose work helped the Jewish State forge close intelligence ties with the United States.

Grajewski, who from 1957 to 1971 fed disinformation to the Soviet Union at the behest of Israel's Shin Beth domestic security agency, is credited with one of the country's greatest feats of espionage.

TOKYO, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - A postcard mailed by a Japanese soldier from a World War II battlefield in Burma reached his friend 64 years after it was sent, thanks to a Japanese exchange student and the family of a former US soldier who kept the card.

The card travelled from Burma, Nagasaki, Arizona and Hawaii before finding Shizuo Nagano, 80, in southern Kochi prefecture, according to Mukogawa Women's University.

The postcard was written by Nobuchika Yamashita. He used to work with Nagano at their neighborhood store before Yamashita was drafted.

CHICAGO, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - A century after the first electric washing machines promised to take the work out of laundry, it doesn't seem like today's multi-cycle magicians are saving us much time.

Sure we don't have to boil the water and lug it by hand over to big metal tubs. Nor do we have to strain our arms running sopping wet clothes through a wringer thanks the advent of the spin cycle.

But, somehow, the pile of washing has managed to grow ever larger with every seemingly time-saving advance.

ALGIERS, Oct 20, 2007 (AFP) - France handed over to Algeria Saturday details of where its forces laid millions of landmines on the country's eastern and western borders half-a-century ago, the French embassy in Algiers said.

'General Jean-Louis Georgelin, chief of the armed forces general staff, officially delivered to his Algerian counterpart, Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaid Salah, the plans of minefields laid ... by the French army between 1956 and 1959,' an embassy statement said.