Icebreakers have abandoned efforts to keep open a key European inland waterway connecting the Black Sea and the North Sea after persistent ice blocked a canal in Germany, officials in Nuremberg said Sunday. According to dpa, the 171-kilometre canal linking the Danube to the Rhine valley was abandoned to ice Saturday. The canal runs from Bamberg, on a Rhine tributary, the Main, to Kehlheim on the Danube. Civilian icebreakers had worked for weeks to stop ice forming with temperatures below freezing. Oceangoing freighters off load cargoes at Rotterdam in the Netherlands for distribution by river ship throughout the European continent.
