Tabloid Grants Gerd's Birthday Wishes

When German Chancellor blew out the candles on his birthday cake on Wednesday, he must have had many wishes that he wanted to come true. Being the leader of a country experiencing financial hardships at a time of global instability, Schröder could have asked for many things -- an end to Germany's recession, the resolution of the war on terror, a break from all the pressure surrounding his reform packages.

So imagine his surprise when he looked at the morning papers on his 60th birthday to find out that many of the things he could have wished for had apparently come true. There, splashed across the back page of the Bild tabloid, in gaudy Technicolor, were Gerhard's dreams come true.

But far from doing so out of a sense of duty in celebrating the country's top politician's birthday, Bild was apparently aiming a clever dig into the ribs of a chancellor who had recently stopped giving interviews to the paper, claiming Bild had an agenda to disrupt his government.

The top-selling daily had printed a bogus front page at the rear of the paper which proclaimed that on the event of his milestone birthday, Schröder had been made chancellor for life and that President George W. Bush had apologized for ever arguing with him.

Bush, whom Schröder angered by opposing the Iraq war, is quoted as saying: “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I should have listened to Gerd much more often.”

In addition, opposition conservative leader Angela Merkel had dissolved her party declaring: “Schröder is simply better at this,” while another story described how one of Schröder's favorite dishes “Curry Sausage” had been found to contain a new vitamin that prevents premature hair graying -- a sensitive topic for the chancellor, who took a news agency to court for wrongly claiming that he dyed his hair.