GERMANY: A pensioner has started digging in Germany’s western Ruhr region for the Amber Room, a priceless work of art looted by Nazis from the Soviet Union during World War Two and missing for 70 years, but says he needs a new drill to help him.

The mystery of the golden Amber Room continues to shine, says Kya deLongchamps

THE Amber Room, Katherine Palace, St Petersburg in Russia was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, and was presented later to Czar Peter the Great.

Shooting began today in a forest outside Berlin of a film starring Tom Cruise as Germany's most famous anti-Hitler plotter.

President Vladimir Putin said he will "never agree to the division of the sovereignty of Russia" implied by European Union plans to impose visas on the residents of the country's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.