News in Brief

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will visit Israel next week, Israeli Foreign Ministry sources said. Westerwelle, who heads the Free Democrat party, will arrive on Monday for a two-day working visit that will include meetings with Palestinian officials. In Israel, he will meet with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres, as well as visiting Yad Vashem. On November 30, Netanyahu and some of his ministers will travel to Berlin for a joint session with their German counterparts. (Assaf Uni)

A taxi driver was found dead in his vehicle, with his throat slit, yesterday morning. Hamza Hamza, 48, a father of five from the Druze village of Beit Jann, was found near a school in the nearby town of Ma'alot. A gag order has been imposed on the details of the investigation, but police said they believed the motive was robbery. A senior officer told Haaretz that violent robberies of taxi drivers were highly uncommon in Ma'alot, unlike in larger cities. One driver working in the area said his colleagues were dismayed by the news. "If it's about a robbery, this can happen to anyone," he said. (Jack Khoury)

Jerusalem police arrested a Jewish teenager yesterday on suspicion of stabbing a 42-year-old Arab man in the stomach earlier in the day. The 16-year-old boy turned himself in, telling police that he had acted in self defense after the man came at him. The victim sustained numerous wounds to his stomach during the attack on Levi Eshkol street on the city's northeast side, and was hospitalized in moderate condition. (Liel Kyzer)

A Petah Tikva court yesterday charged Damian Karlik with six counts of murder over the slaying of the Oshrenko family in Rishon Letzion last month. Police allege that Karlik, 38, planned to rob the Oshrenko family home and suspect he killed the two Oshrenko children out of hatred for the family, whom he felt he had humiliated him when he was fired from his position as head waiter at their restaurant. Karlik's wife, Natasha, was indicted for manslaughter and obstruction of evidence. Karlik's attorney rejected the charges and said that his client was forced into a false confession due to the conditions of the interrogation. (Yuval Goren)

Two refugees were killed on Wednesday night in a fire that broke out in a building on the corner of Tel Aviv's Herzl and Wolfson streets. Dozens of residents were trapped in the building and some were preparing to jump from the windows, but police and firefighters rescued them. The bodies of a man and a woman, asylum-seekers in their 30s from Liberia and Burkina Faso, were found inside. (Yuval Goren)

Uri Messer, the close confidant and attorney of former prime minister Ehud Olmert, will not be charged in the investment center corruption affair, the State Prosecutor's Office announced yesterday. The prosecution said there was insufficient evidence to indict Messer, despite reports that Olmert granted him favors which would constitute a conflict of interest, breach of trust, and fraud. (Tomer Zarchin)