Wednesday, November 11, 2009 PARIS: Award-winning French chocolatier Patrick Roger is commemorating the fall of communism with a 15m long and 900kg chocolate reproduction of the Berlin Wall. Roget has been building the chocolate wall in sections over the past four weeks in his studio outside of Paris. They bear the hallmarks of the original wall with uncanny chocolate replicas of the drawings like "the fraternal kiss" between the then East German leader Eric Honecker and the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The wall is entirely made of black chocolate, the graffiti spray composed of coco-butter and artificial colouring. The chocolate sections of the wall are already on display in four of his French chocolate shops. On Monday, Roget will commemorate the fall of the wall by smashing his own chocolate incarnation in his flagship shop on Paris' Left Bank and the public will have a chance at joining in and enjoying the sweet taste of freedom. Monday marks 20 years since the Berlin Wall was pulled down, leading to the reunification of Germany. The German capital had been divided among the victorious European allies at the end of World War II and quickly became a symbol of the Cold War.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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