Obama speech expected to draw huge crowd in Berlin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Presidential candidate Barack Obama travels to Berlin on Thursday to give the only public speech of a week-long foreign tour, an outdoor address on transatlantic ties that is likely to draw tens of thousands. Highly popular in Germany, where he is often likened to former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, the Democratic senator will also meet for the first time Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opposed his initial plan to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. Instead, Obama will give his evening address at the "Victory Column" in Berlin's central Tiergarten park, down the road but still within sight of the Gate, a landmark that stood behind the Berlin Wall for decades as a potent symbol of the Cold War. "This is a substantive speech about the need to strengthen transatlantic relations in order to confront the challenges... [read full story]