In brief

Huge Berlin tunnels show Hitler's power mania

BERLIN: Three vast tunnels were opened under central Berlin this month, giving a glimpse of Adolf Hitler's megalomaniac vision of a new architectural centre for the capital of Nazi Germany. The 16-metre deep tunnels were constructed in 1938 as part of an underground transport network beneath a series of bombastic buildings designed by Nazi architect Albert Speer, including the biggest domed hall the world had ever seen.

The overground plans, never completed because of World War Two, included boulevards, squares and huge buildings, such as an arch dwarfing the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the 290-metre high Great Hall, with room for 180,000 people.

Hitler called the concept, a symbol of the power of the Third Reich, "Berlin - the capital of the world" but in recent times it has come to be known as "Germania". The tunnels, between 90 and 220 meters long lying beneath the Tiergarten park, would have accommodated roads and a railway line. After the war, British forces in divided Berlin closed the tunnels. They were rediscovered in 1969 but have remained shut. In 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were handed to the city of Berlin

Times of India

US accuses North Korea of violating nuclear accord

Washington: The United States accused North Korea Tuesday of violating a six-nation nuclear accord and retained it on a terror blacklist, after the hardline communist state defiantly suspended disabling its atomic plants.Washington said North Korea would stay on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list until it agreed to a protocol that could verify a nuclear program declared by Pyongyang in June ahead of dismantlement of its atomic arsenal.

"The United States will not take North Korea off the state sponsor of terrorism list until we have a protocol in place to verify the dismantling and accounting for Korea's nuclear program," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.The State Department said Pyongyang's decision to stop disabling its key Yongbyon nuclear complex was of "great concern" and "a step backward" in six-country diplomatic efforts aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

(AFP)

U.S. looking at September deadline

Washington: As India and the U.S. started redrafting the text of the NSG waiver, Washington has said it was working in a focussed manner to push the process with an aim to concluding the civilian nuclear deal by early next month.

"Our principal focus right now has been on the India civil nuclear deal, having worked through the IAEA, now working through the NSG, and still trying to get into a position to make the appropriate presidential determinations in early September," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on way to Tel Aviv.