The German department store Karstadt has been saved from insolvency following months of uncertainty. Billionaire Nicolas Berggruen has finalized a takeover and lower rent for the stores. The 25,000 employees of the Karstadt chain of department stores have had their jobs secured, after months of uncertainty about the future of the retailer. Following 15 months of discussions, all the necessary signatures have been collected on an acquisition deal for Germany's largest department store chain.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet signed off Wednesday on a hefty austerity package that critics say will hit the poorest hardest and could endanger Germany and therefore Europe's economic recovery.

Swiss law prohibits the advertisement of prescription drugs – including botulinum toxin, which is commonly used to smooth wrinkles.

Italian-American actress and director Isabella Rossellini will head the international jury at the 61st Berlin Film Festival from February 10-20, organisers said on Monday. "It's fantastic that Isabella Rossellini will be the president of the Berlinale Jury in 2011," said festival director Dieter Kosslick. "She is a multifaceted, creative film artist with extensive experience in European, American and international cinema."

Police used a cherry-picker crane Monday morning to pluck three demonstrators from the top of an earth-moving machine where they had been protesting against the controversial Stuttgart 21 rail project. The trio from the group Robin Wood had occupied the giant mechanical digger for five hours, delaying the demolition work on the historic Stuttgart train station. Tens of thousands of Stuttgarters have demonstrated over the past 10 days against the project.

The committee behind a people’s initiative to restore capital punishment for murders involving sexual violence have decided to withdraw it. On their website, the group said that the initiative, which caused intense debate in Switzerland over the past week, had been the only way for them to make the population aware of problems in the justice system. The surprising turn in the story comes a day after the Federal Chancellery said the initiative met formal legal requirements.

A tornado raged through eastern and central Hesse on Monday evening, causing severe damages estimated to be in the millions of euros, according to the authorities in the state. The violent funnel cloud tore the roofs off of buildings, destroyed cars and uprooted traffic signals when the storm hit around 8 pm. The Grünberg city district of Lumda in Gießen county was hit particularly hard, with some 10 buildings losing their roofs completely, while another 44 sustained heavy damages, police said.

Christoph Schlingensief, one of Germany's most provocative theatre and film directors, died of lung cancer on Saturday, organizers of the Ruhr Triennale festival said. He was 49. A  director from Berlin's Volksbuhne theatre, he was due to present his latest production "S.M.A.S.H." at the festival, but had canceled the performances in July due to his illness.

Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. must pay former minority shareholders of Wella AG additional compensation of nearly $300 million, a German judge ruled earlier this month in a decision that was released Aug. 18. The minority shareholders had challenged the adequacy of P&G’s offer of 72.86 euros per share when it took full control of Wella, a German hair products company. P&G develops, manufactures and markets consumer products under such popular brands as Tide, Crest, Downy and Pampers.

The Swiss government says bilateral accords are still the best way to work with the European Union, despite increasing difficulties.

Austrian officials said that double-digit increases in stays by people from the United States, Russia, France, Japan and Great Britain helped Vienna hotels record 1.125 million overnights last month – more than ever registered in the month. Tourism authorities said the figure was a 15.6 per cent year on year improvement, explaining that July 2009 figures were down compared to statistics for the same month in the previous year due to strong demand for rooms during the European Football Championship Austria co-hosted with Switzerland that summer.

Police dragged away hundreds of protesters at the Stuttgart central train station on Wednesday night to clear the way for work on the controversial “Stuttgart 21” project to turn the site into a major European transportation hub.. The protestors were physically removed with “direct force” after they failed to clear the entrance to the construction site to allow heavy machinery into the area, police said on Thursday.

Improved game controls are among the highlights of Gamescom, Europe's largest computer games fair. Hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to attend the event.

Russia has imposed a ban on wheat and other grain exports until the end of the year after a severe drought and an outbreak of wildfires destroyed one-third of the harvest and ravaged agricultural land. Exports of grain have been banned to reduce the chance of a food shortage. An estimated 10 million hectares of agricultural land has been devastated by the fires following the worst heatwave in Russian history.
Russia is one of the world's biggest producers of wheat, barley and rye. However a quarter of the country's crops have been destroyed, according to President Dmitry Medvedev.

Euro zone industrial production declined in June, falling sharply in France and Germany. Output in the 16 countries using the euro fell 0.1 percent month-on-month. It was up 8.2 percent from June last year. The drop followed sharp increases in April and May.
The output figures indicate momentum may have faltered late last quarter although the data are volatile and forward-looking reports for the third quarter have so far been positive.

Joao Vale de Almeida formally became the new European Union ambassador to the United States on Tuesday after handing over his credentials to President Barack Obama in Washington. Vale de Almeida is the first EU ambassador to the US since the reforming Lisbon Treaty came into force on December 1, 2009. The Lisbon Treaty aims to enhance the EU's capacity to operate more effectively and act more cohesively in matters of foreign affairs and security. Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, the position of ambassador to the US was held by the rotating EU presidency, which changed hands every six months.

Germany is sending 100,000 respirator masks to Moscow where wildfires have led to a dramatic rise in toxic air pollution. As hundreds of fires rage around the city, residents are trying to escape the choking smog. Germany said it would fly 100,000 respirator masks to Moscow as air pollution from nearby forest fires rises to increasingly unbearable levels for residents. The German Interior Ministry also promised additional equipment to help Russian emergency services fight some 840 separate blazes.

A 550-pound World War II-era bomb was discovered at a recycling center close to an important cable-stayed bridge in Hamburg on Friday, forcing authorities to evacuate the area for recovery efforts. It remains unclear how the large American aerial bomb wound up in a pile of metal scrap at the recycling center just 2300 feet from the heavily trafficked Köhlbrandbrücke, a fire department spokesperson said.

A Warsaw appeals court upheld Thursday the extradition of an alleged Mossad agent to Germany, where he is suspected of assisting in the killing of a leader of the Palestinian militant movement Hamas in Dubai last January. The decision means the alleged agent, Uri Brodsky, must be handed over to the German authorities within 10 days, where he will face forgery charges. Germany applied for Brodsky's extradition following his arrest at Warsaw airport in June on a European warrant charging him with espionage and helping to falsely obtain a German passport.

Industrial giant Siemens A.G. said it would cut 2,000 jobs in its German IT solutions and services (SIS) unit, part of a broader program initially unveiled in March. The decision is part of a broad restructuring of the SIS division announced on March 18 that included the elimination of 4,200 jobs worldwide. Siemens said then that it would restructure the unit around two poles of activity - business information technology solutions and IT outsourcing.

Germany’s under-20 women’s football team took home the FIFA World Cup on Sunday for the second time after a 2:0 victory over Nigeria in Bielefeld that completed an undefeated tournament. It was the first host nation victory in the history of the tournament, and followed their 2004 victory in Thailand. The team’s final game was attended by a sold-out crowd of almost 25,000, a turn out said to be a good sign ahead of the FIFA World Cup scheduled to take place in Germany next year.

Austria has the second lowest birthrate in the European Union, according to Eurostat,  the European Commission’s statistics agency. It said there were 9.1 births per 1,000 inhabitants in Austria last year. Only neighbouring Germany had a lower rate (7.9). Portugal was third from bottom (9.4), while Ireland was reported as having the highest birth rate among the EU-27 with 16.8 births per 1,000 inhabitants in 2009, followed by the United Kingdom (12.8) and France (12.7).

German President Christian Wulff has lent his weight to the growing calls for Duisburg mayor Adolf Sauerland to resign over after last weekned's Love Parade tragedy, which cost the lives of 21 people.. In an interview published on Sunday in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Wulff said, "Of course everyone should be considered innocent until proven guilty. But separate of personal guilt, there is also political responsibility.

The mayor of Duisburg has resisted growing calls for his resignation amid claims he brushed aside police concerns about the venue for Saturday’s Love Parade, where 20 people were crushed to death. During a visit to the accident site, Adolf Sauerland was booed and attacked by locals and is now accompanied everywhere by two bodyguards. A report prepared earlier this month and leaked to the media put the maximum occupancy of the venue, a 62-acre disused freight yard, at 250,000.

Air Berlin expects to start flying as part of the Oneworld alliance of airlines in early 2012 in a move analysts said would bolster its position against German flagship carrier Lufthansa. In a first step, Air Berlin has entered code-sharing agreements with Oneworld members American Airlines and Finnair.
Bilateral agreements with British Airways and Iberia will follow, Air Berlin said. Joining the Oneworld alliance would allow Air Berlin to share pricing, scheduling and other information within the alliance.

The American Jewish Congress has suspended its activities after running out of funds. The suspension of the venerable Jewish-American advocacy organization’s activities, reported by the  Jewish Telegraph Agency and confirmed by acting co-executive director Marc Stern, comes after months of rumors that the organization was on the verge of collapse after losing most of its endowment in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. The Jerusalem Post had reported in April that the AJCongress lost as much as 90 percent of its approximately $24 million endowment in the Madoff scam.