> ~ Hundreds of German truckers, farmers and taxi drivers jammed traffic in the northern city of Hanover on Thursday in the latest protest against sharply increased fuel prices.
> The main A44 motorway into Belgium from Aachen was blocked for a second day by trucks on the Belgian side.
> More protests were expected in Magdeburg, although strict penalties for unauthorised pickets meant that truck blockades such as those seen elsewhere in Europe were unlikely.
> Some 500 trucks, taxis and tractors moved in a slow, hooting procession through Hanover, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's home town, demanding his centre-left government scrap new fuel duties to ease the pain of high world oil prices.
> Many of the truckers were self-employed small businessmen, complaining higher costs were squeezing their profit margins as they were unable to pass on the increases in a very tight market. Trade unions representing wage-earning drivers have backed the government's refusal to cut fuel duties.
>"We've reached the limit," said Hanover protester Jens Koenig, 32, saying fuel price increases had added $1,000 a year to the cost of running each of his three trucks."We are being strangled by the politicians and the oil companies."
> Despite several days of protests, the government, which includes the environmentalist Greens party, has ruled out scrapping its"eco-tax", designed to discourage use of polluting fuels, but has said it will consider helping welfare-recipients hurt by higher petrol and heating oil costs.
> The conservative opposition was due to launch a poster campaign later on Thursday, attacking the eco-tax.
> Willi Heineking, who runs a road haulage business and is a conservative member of the local state assembly in Hanover, said foreign competition was driving German truckers out of business.
> The government says diesel is cheaper than in many neighbouring countries and it is using the proceeds of the eco-tax, which has added five cents to the price of a litre of fuel over the past two years, to cut Germany's high non-wage labour costs by reducing employers' pension contributions.
> The German road haulage federation announced on Wednesday it would stage a major go-slow protest action in the capital, Berlin, on September 26.
> ~ German farmers demonstrating against high fuel prices Thursday
>blockaded Wintershall's 80,000 b/d refinery at Lingen in the
>northwest of the country, AFP reported. Around 40 farmers
>blocked the entrance to the refinery as police watched but did
>not intervene. In the city of Hanover around 500 trucks,
>tractors and taxis took part in a slow-moving convoy aimed at
>blocking traffic. The demonstrators were seeking to hand over a
>letter of grievance to the state parliament in Hanover.


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Ob Ihrs glaubt oder nicht

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