A lone gunman killed two U.S. airmen Wednesday and seriously injured two more in an attack on their bus at Frankfurt airport in Germany, local authorities and the U.S. military said.

"Two airmen have been killed and two were wounded during a shooting incident today at Frankfurt International Airport," the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) said in a statement.

Germany's popular defense minister quit Tuesday a week after being stripped of his doctorate for alleged plagiarism, depriving Chancellor Angela Merkel's government of its star performer.

"I give particular thanks to the chancellor for all the support she has given me and her great trust and understanding," Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told a hastily convened news conference in Berlin.

Frank Buckles, who lied about his age to get into uniform during World War I and lived to be the last surviving U.S. veteran of that war, has died. He was 110.

Buckles, who also survived being a civilian POW in the Philippines in World War II, died peacefully of natural causes early Sunday at his home in Charles Town, biographer and family spokesman David DeJonge said in a statement. Buckles turned 110 on Feb. 1 and had been advocating for a national memorial honoring veterans of World War I in Washington, D.C.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel berated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to advance peace talks during a "tense" phone call, Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday.

Citing German sources, the newspaper said Merkel responded furiously when Netanyahu criticized Germany for supporting a Palestinian-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement construction.

Germany stressed Monday its policy towards Iran had not changed after its foreign minister held a controversial meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the weekend.

"Our international partners know perfectly well that nothing at all has changed in terms of our attitude to Iran," Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular government news conference.

Heidi, Germany's beloved cross-eyed opossum, is taking a page from Paul the Octopus' playbook: the marsupial will attempt to pick this year's Oscar winners.

Leipzig Zoo Director Joerg Junghold told Germany's RTL television on Friday that Heidi will be appearing on the "Jimmy Kimmel Show" alongside the Oscars on Feb. 27.

Germany's Volkswagen, Europe's biggest automaker, plans to boost its workforce from 250,000 to 290,000 by 2018, with most of the new jobs to be created in China, the German auto weekly Woche reported Sunday.

Citing internal and confidential documents, the weekly said that "the number of VW employees will rise from 250,000 to 290,000 by 2018," including 35,000 new posts in China.

Egypt loomed large over talks of the Middle East Quartet in Germany on Saturday, with fears that a change of regime in Cairo could throw into turmoil an already deeply troubled peace process.

"One of our big partners did not want the Quartet to meet at this stage, saying maybe it's not the moment to be discussing the peace process when the whole region is undergoing dramatic changes," a European diplomat said.

A "tsunami of obesity" is unfurling across the world, resulting in a near-doubling of the numbers of dangerously overweight adults since 1980, doctors warned on Friday.

More than half a billion men and women -- nearly one in nine of all adults -- are clinically obese, according to research by a team from Imperial College London, Harvard and the World Health Organization (WHO).

A Lebanese-German man who says he was snatched by the CIA in Macedonia and tortured at a secret prison after being mistaken for a terrorism suspect, will begin a legal battle against Macedonia Friday to demand official recognition of his ordeal.

Khaled el-Masri is seeking €50,000 ($69,000) in compensation — and an apology — from the government in Macedonia, where he says he was abducted while on a trip in 2003. His action follows failed attempts to have his case heard in court in the United States and Germany.