Germany
Protesters delay nuclear waste train
Police cleared protesters with water cannons on Wednesday as a train laden with 60 tons of nuclear waste arrived in this town a day late after being blocked by demonstrators who chained themselves to the tracks.
With seven helicopters hovering overhead, the train entered the northern town of Dannenberg as night fell, just before 7.30 p.m. Protesters along the route whistled and screamed "Get away!"
Nearly 1 1/2 hours later, the wagons carrying the waste reached Dannenburg's heavily protected depot, where the six containers are to be tested for radioactivity before being loaded onto flatbed trucks for the last leg of a much-disrupted 375-mile trip from a French reprocessing plant.
Scotland
Wreckage from missing U.S. fighter planes found
Rescuers working in blinding snow found wreckage of a second missing American F-15 fighter jet on Wednesday in the Scottish Highlands, the U.S. Air Force said. The search for the pilot was suspended as darkness and the weather closed in, and the operation was to resume at dawn. The plane's tailpiece was found near Ben Macdhui in the Cairngorm mountains, where the first of the missing single-seat planes and the body of Lt. Col. Kenneth Hyvonen, 40, were found Tuesday.
Searchers on Wednesday found the tailpiece of the second plane about 400 yards from the first wreckage site. The two aircraft vanished 45 minutes after taking off at midday Monday from Lakenheath air base, 75 miles northeast of London.
MOSCOW
Putin consolidates hold on Russian power
With the most sweeping government changes since he was elected president a year ago, Vladimir Putin on Wednesday strengthened his control over Russia and expanded his power base by naming staunch loyalists to the key jobs of defense and interior ministers.
The Cabinet changes, which come amid a chill in relations with the United States, put Sergei Ivanov, Putin's confidant and fellow KGB veteran, in charge of streamlining the bloated and underfunded military. And he put Boris Gryzlov, a newcomer to the political elite, in charge of police and interior forces. Western governments had long recommended that Russia follow the practice of putting a civilian in charge of the military, and Putin described the reshuffle as a "deliberate effort to demilitarize Russia's public life."
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