Last week UNESCO awarded six housing estates in Berlin the World Heritage seal of approval. Bauhaus Archiv Director Annemarie Jaeggi tells SPIEGEL ONLINE why these examples of modernist architecture are so important.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Dr. Jaeggi, last week, six Berlin social housing projects were included on UNESCO's world heritage list (more...) -- all of them examples of the kind of modernist architecture not often chosen by UNESCO. Did you expect the honor?

Annemarie Jaeggi: I was delighted. The bid entailed a huge amount of work. Some people have been working on this for 10 years and I had huge concerns because of Dresden (more...). (The city's plans to build a bridge may jeopardize the Elbe Valley's UNESCO Status -- Ed.) There was a fear that UNESCO would say that Germany was not working hard enough and wouldn't deal with any of the bids from Germany.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Berlin region already has two sites on the UNESCO list: the palaces and gardens of Postsdam and the Museum Island in the heart of the city. What significance do these new sites have?

Jaeggi: We think it is important that Berlin, the capital of modernist architecture, now has a UNESCO status for modernist buildings. These Berlin estates were something really exceptional in Germany and in Europe.

PARIS: Even if you couldn't be on the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day on Monday to watch seven parachutists float down in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy, you can still celebrate the greatness of France with a new local tradition.

Eat a hamburger.

Beginning a few years ago but picking up momentum in the past nine months, hamburgers and cheeseburgers have invaded the city. Anywhere tourists are likely to go this summer - in cafés in Saint Germain des Prés, in fashion-world hangouts, even in restaurants run by three-star chefs - they are likely to find a juicy beef patty, almost invariably on a sesame seed bun.

"It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit - the subversive, even," said Hélène Samuel, a restaurant consultant in Paris. "Eating with your hands, it's pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it."

It is a startling turnaround in a country where a chef once sued McDonald's for $2.7 million in damages over a poster that suggested he was dreaming of a Big Mac. Hamburgers were everything that French dining is not: informal, messy, fast and foreign.

A German construction company has secured the contract to build the world's third-largest mosque in Algiers, during a two-day visit to the Algerian capital by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

German architects Engel and Zimmermann, together with construction engineers Krebs and Kiefer, are to build the mosque to hold 40,000 faithful over the next four years.

  

Other members of the large business delegation traveling with the chancellor on her first visit to the country expressed confidence that other major deals would soon be signed.

  

Among the contracts under consideration is the delivery of four German-built frigates to the Algerian navy at a cost of some 5 billion euros ($8 billion).

 

Merkel put business interests at the focus of the visit to Algeria, which is the third-largest provider of natural gas to European markets. Mutual trade between Germany and Algeria was running at 1.2 billion euros in 2007.

 

"We can increase this and want to do so," said Merkel, who met President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika and his ministers on Wednesday.

Trams are enjoying a comeback in France. From Nantes to Marseille, city planners are building new, high-tech streetcar lines as central elements in urban redevelopment. And they haven't forgotten any of the French flair the world has come to love.

It's bright yellow with black stripes -- like some kind of futuristic tiger on rails -- and it runs through Mulhouse at eight-minute intervals like a streak of light. This city in France's Alsace region was once a leader in the industrial revolution, but it is now visibly struggling with structural change. The new tram system has brought it fresh pride and and a new sense of self-confidence.

"We wanted a tram that called attention to itself," says Deputy Mayor Michel Samuel-Weis, "as a symbol of economic vitality, environmental awareness and civic improvement -- transportation as an integrated cultural concept."

FARNBOROUGH, England : Airbus notched another plane order as the trade days of the Farnborough International Airshow wound to a close Thursday, pushing the European plane maker even further ahead of its U.S. rival Boeing in deals done at the event.

Airbus announced that it would sell 10 long-haul A350 XWB aircraft to South American consortium Synergy Aerospace in a deal worth $2.1 billion at catalogue prices.

The order firms up a previous tentative agreement with Synergy Aerospace, the main shareholder in Avianca and SAM airlines in Colombia, Oceanair in Brazil and VIP in Ecuador, that was signed in February.

The deal takes Airbus' total orders so far at the weeklong show outside of London to 251 planes worth $39.1 billion - more than double the value of the orders taken by Chicago-based Boeing, which has booked 152 deals worth $16.8 billion.

A new threat to the fragile marine ecosystems of Antarctica from global warming has been identified, with the discovery that an increasing number of icebergs are tearing up the sea floor and destroying any life in their way.

The shallow habitats of species such as giant sea spiders, Antarctic worms, sea urchins and corals are facing a growing risk from icebergs, research has revealed, with more bergs floating freely in coastal waters as temperatures rise.

While these near-shore ecosystems have always ben pounded by icebergs from time to time, crushing the animals and plants that live there, the strike rate is increasing as a warmer climate shrinks the winter sea ice that would otherwise lock the bergs in, scientists said.

The retreat of coastal glaciers and the collapse of floating ice shelves also mean that more bergs are being calved into the sea, adding to the risk of scouring.