Born Angela Kasner (Merkel is the name of her first husband) in West Germany in 1954, her father, an official in the Lutheran Church, moved the family to socialist East Germany just a few weeks after her birth—an unusual move, since most Germans who could were fleeing toward the freedom of West Germany. Merkel was the oldest of three children, and grew up on the outskirts of Templin, a small town near the Brandenburg forest. She had an early interest in politics—at fourteen, she secretly listened to radio broadcasts from West German elections—but pursued science instead, getting a degree in physics and then a doctorate in quantum chemistry. Her East German upbringing, tendency toward caution and scientific training may have shaped her leadership approach as the most powerful woman in Europe.
One Taliban militant is still battling with security forces at the airport
Another nine Taliban fighters are dead and one wounded, while another continues to battle with security forces at the scene, officials said.
Up to another 35 people have also been injured in the attack which was launched on Tuesday evening.
Armed attackers wearing military uniforms stormed the complex.
They initially took up position in an old school building in a residential area of the large, heavily fortified compound which houses both a civilian airport and military base used by Afghan and NATO military forces.
Witnesses said some families had been taken hostage and used as "human shields" by the assailants.
Security forces at the entrance of the airport
One said: "Soldiers were calling on Taliban attackers to let women and children go but attackers declined. We could hear children screaming during the fighting."
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and posted a picture on their website of the assailants, armed with Kalashnikovs, which the group said were involved in the assault.
"Afghanistan's national army forces are bravely fighting terrorists in airport areas and are trying to act cautiously to avoid harm to civilians," the country's defence ministry said in a statement.
The assault comes ahead of the Heart of Asia conference hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad which aims to revive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani said he hoped to see "positive moves in the coming weeks".
"We very much hope that Pakistan can play a very influential role and very important role in the peace and reconciliation process," he added.
Kandahar is the second-largest city in Afghanistan, situated southwest of the capital Kabul.
Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world, the leader of the country that drives the European economy, and may help determine the fate of the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. She’s also a soccer-loving scientist who is reportedly afraid of dogs. Here are 13 things you may not know about 2015’s Person of the Year: Ossenbrink Media Group/Sygma/ReduxAngela Kasner, at age 3, in 1957 Angela Merkel grew up Angela Kasner, and her father’s family is partly of Polish descent. Merkel is the name of her first husband, a fellow physics student whom she married in 1977 and divorced four years later, according to a profile in the New Yorker. Laurence ChaperonAngela Merkel on the eve of her election in 2005 with parents. Herlind Kasner, Angela Merkel’s mother, from Hamburg was a Latin and English teacher. Her father, Horst Kasner, originally from Berlin, was a pastor in the Protestant Church in Germany. Merkel’s father was an official in the Lutheran church. He moved the family from West Germany to Soviet-controlled East Germany shortly after Angela was born, even as thousands of others were fleeing the other way. Merkel’s disciplined and cautious approach to politics is often credited to her East German upbringing. Fabrizio Bensch—ReutersElderly supporters hold placards that read "Angie" an "Mutti" at a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) election campaign rally in Magdeburg, Germany on Sept. 17, 2013. German supporters call her Mutti, which means “Mommy.” As a nine-year-old in gym class, Angela once stood paralyzed at the top of a diving board for 45 minutes before finally deciding to jump in the pool right before class ended. Michaela Rehle—ReutersChancellor Angela Merkel drinks a beer after her speech in a beer tent in Munich on May 15, 2013. Merkel worked as a bartender at disco parties in college. Ulrich Baumgarten—Getty ImagesFormer Federal Minister Merkel holds up a test tube filled with water at the water-control-station of Bad Honnef on Jan. 12, 1995. She has a degree in physics and a doctorate in quantum chemistry, and some say her success as a politician comes from her scientific, analytic approach to situations. She went on to work as a research scientist, as the only woman in the theoretical chemistry section at the East German Academy of Sciences. Mehner/ullstein bild/Getty ImagesBuilding of the Ministry for State Security in East Berlin on April 26, 1974. At the end of the 1970s, Merkel applied for an assistant professor position at an engineering school and was asked to join the Stasi (East German secret police.) She says she refused, claiming that she would make a bad spy because she was too much of a blabbermouth. She didn’t get the job. Had she joined, a future career in German politics would have been impossible, according to a profile in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. For some politicians in a reunified Germany, any past association with the Stasi would soon be considered politically poisonous, and many were forced to resign when past links were discovered. After Merkel divorced her first husband, she lived like a squatterin an illegal apartment near the Friedrichstrasse train station. On her 30th birthday, her father came to visit, telling her, “You haven’t gotten very far.” Chute Du Mur Berlin/Gamma-Rapho/Getty ImagesPeople celebrate on the Berlin wall on Nov. 12, 1989. On the night the Berlin wall fell, in November 1989, 35-year-old Merkel visited a sauna. Afterward, she wandered across the border to celebrate briefly with strangers, drank one beer, then went immediately home so she wouldn’t be tired for work the next day. Almost everyone else in Germany was out all night long. AFP/Getty Images (2)Left: Angela Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer in Bachotek, Poland in 1989; Right:German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband meet Polish President Lech Kaczynskiat at the presidential palace in Warsaw, on March 16, 2007. Her husband Joachim Sauer, a professor at Berlin University, dislikes publicity so much he didn’t even show up to Merkel’s 2005 inauguration as Chancellor. He has also been known to fly budget airlines even when he is allowed to travel with Merkel on official planes. They love seeing opera and hiking together. Thanks to his interest in opera and avoidance of the spotlight, the German media have nicknamed Sauer, “the Phantom of the Opera.” Merkel is reportedly a very good cook, makes a mean plum cake, and has been spotted shopping for groceries at regular supermarkets where she pays in cash. She told former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan that she makes breakfast for her husband every morning. ITAR-TASS/Presidential Press Service/AFP/Getty ImagesRussian President Vladimir Putin and Chancellor Angela Merkel are watched by Putin's dog Koni as they address journalists after their working meeting at the Bocharov Ruchei residence in Sochi on Jan. 21, 2007. She is afraid of dogs after she wasbitten by one in 1995, and Vladimir Putin has repeatedly used his pet dogs to try to intimidate Merkel, according to numerous press reports cited by Foreign Policy. Lars Baron—FIFA/Getty ImagesHead Coach Joachim Loew of Germany (right) celebrates with players and Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Germany dressing room after the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final match between Germany and Argentina at Maracana in Rio de Janeiro on July 13, 2014. Merkel frequently visits the German soccer team’s locker rooms to congratulate them after a win, and once saw star playerBastian Schweinsteiger naked by accident.
Malaysia's airport operator Berhad have taken out newspaper adverts along with photos of the dumped aircraft in a final bid to get the planes removed.
The notices warn the Boeing 747-200s, sitting idle at Kuala Lumpur airport, must be collected within 14 days or the airport can sell or dispose of them.
Officials have said the move is aimed at recovering debts owed to the airport following "exhaustive steps" to find the owners, believed to be defunct foreign firms.
According to Malaysia's The Star newspaper, Iceland-based Air Atlanta Icelandic said it operated the planes until 2010 but did not know who owned the planes now.
Some aviation enthusiasts claim to have linked two of the three planes to Malaysia Airlines, saying that their cargo branch leased them after the Icelandic airline let them go.
But a press officer for the airline denied owning the planes.
They told The Star: "If it was ours, we would have claimed it."
If the planes were to be sold, there would likely be little market for them due to dwindling demand for four-engine jets and a struggling air cargo market.
Europe’s most powerful leader is a refugee from a time and place where her power would have been unimaginable. The German Democratic Republic, where Angela Merkel grew up, was neither democratic nor a republic; it was an Orwellian horror show, where the Iron Curtain found literal expression in the form of the Berlin Wall. The shy daughter of a Lutheran minister, Merkel slipped into politics as a divorced Protestant in a largely Catholic party, a woman in a frat house, an Ossi in the newly unified Germany of the 1990s where easterners were still aliens. No other major Western leader grew up in a stockade, which gave Merkel a rare perspective on the lure of freedom and the risks people will take to taste it. Her political style was not to have one; no flair, no flourishes, no charisma, just a survivor’s sharp sense of power and a scientist’s devotion to data. Even after Merkel became Germany’s Chancellor in 2005, and then commanded the world’s fourth largest economy, she remained resolutely dull—the better to be underestimated time and again. German pundits called her Merkelvellian when she outsmarted, isolated or just outlasted anyone who might mount a challenge to her. Ever cautious, she proudly practiced what Willy Brandt once called Die Politik der kleinen Schritte (the politics of baby steps), or as we call it in the U.S., leading from behind. Then came 2015. Not once or twice but three times this year there has been reason to wonder whether Europe could continue to exist, not culturally or geographically but as a historic experiment in ambitious statecraft. Merkel had already emerged as the indispensable player in managing Europe’s serial debt crises; she also led the West’s response to Vladimir Putin’s creeping theft of Ukraine. But now the prospect of Greek bankruptcy threatened the very existence of the euro zone. The migrant and refugee crisis challenged the principle of open borders. And finally, the carnage in Paris revived the reflex to slam doors, build walls and trust no one.
As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch.
The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.
“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads the email, from Panetta’s chief of staff Jeremy Bash. “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”
" ... we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”
- Jeremy Bash, Pentagon chief of staff
The email was sent out at 7:19 p.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2012, in the early stages of the eight-hour siege that also claimed the lives of Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, private CIA contractors who raced to the aid of embattled State Department workers.
Although the email came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Woods and Doherty.
“This leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come,” Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog said in a statement.
Parts of the email from Bash were redacted before release, including details on what military forces were available.
In defending the Obama administration’s lack of a military response to the attack, Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee nearly two years ago that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”
The first assault occurred at the consulate at 3:40 p.m. ET. The second attack on the CIA annex a little over a mile away began three hours later. Bash’s email was sent approximately 40 minutes after that attack began.
Bash’s email, which bore the subject line “Libya,” was sent to Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff Jacob Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides.
The attack came in three waves at two locations. It began when a handful of attackers scaled the wall of the diplomatic post at dusk and opened a gate, allowing dozens of armed men inside who then set the building on fire. Stevens and Smith died after breathing in smoke while hiding in a safe room, and later died.
Hours later, a nearby CIA annex was attacked twice. Woods and Doherty died there while defending the annex from the rooftop. A team of six security officials summoned from Tripoli and a Libyan military unit helped evacuate the remaining U.S. personnel who were taken to an airport and flown out of Benghazi.
The Obama administration later falsely claimed that the attack was triggered by an Internet video that insulted Islam.
Lawmakers investigating the events surrounding Benghazi already had acquired the e-mail, along with tens of thousands of others related to the probe, according to Matt Wolking, spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
“The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months," Wolking told FoxNews.com. "While the Committee does not rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers, I can confirm that we obtained the unredacted version of this email last year, in addition to Jake Sullivan’s response."
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) are investigating a hate crime allegation after Fury made comments about homosexuality on the Victoria Derbyshire programme.
More than 100,000 people have called for the world heavyweight boxing champion to be removed from the shortlist for the BBC's Sports Personality Of The Year.
On Wednesday morning Fury posted a picture of him after his title victory over Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf with the caption: "Take my belts, sign your petitions, but you will never take this night from me."
Fury, who is of traveller heritage and styles himself as the 'Gypsy King', added: "Must hurt that a gypsy is the best fighter on the planet!
"I have the press camped outside my house! Lol me famous."
The BBC has refused to remove fury from its 12-person list, with the winner set to be announced on 20 December.
Fury has also been accused of sexism, having reportedly said a woman's place was "in the kitchen and on her back".
Fury became the WBA, WBO and IBF champion after his victory over Klitschko last month, but has since been stripped of his IBF title.
It is because he refused a bout against the IBF's mandatory challenger - instead signing up for a rematch with Klitschko.
