A group of Syrian dissidents vandalised the Syrian embassy in Berlin on Friday, destroying furniture and defacing pictures of President Bashar al-Assad. Germany's Foreign Office condemned the intrusion "in the strongest terms." Police said about 30 men and women broke through the main entrance during the afternoon. The group hung a flag symbolizing the Syrian resistance movement from one of the windows and spray-painted political slogans in Arabic and English on the front of the building, including one that read "Revolution and Freedom."

A French appeals court on Thursday upheld the Church of Scientology's 2009 fraud conviction on charges it pressured members into paying large sums for questionable remedies. The case began with a legal complaint by a young woman who said she took out loans and spent the equivalent of euro 21,000 ($28,000) on books, courses and "purification packages" after being recruited in 1998. When she sought reimbursement and to leave the group, its leadership refused to allow either. She was among three eventual plaintiffs.

Germany's biggest bank reported Thursday a strong rise in overall profits for 2011. Net profit jumped by 87 percent last year to a total of 4.3 billion euros ($5.5 billion), and revenues rose by 16 percent to 33.2 billion euros ($43.7 billion). However, the bank's good overall results were marred by an unexpectedly weak fourth quarter, in which earnings dwindled to 186 million euros - down 76 percent from the preceding three months and a drop of 69 percent compared with the same period in 2010. Excluding tax benefits in the fourth quarter, the bank actually lost 351 million euros.

Visiting German Foreign Minister Guido
Westerwelle signed an agreement Wednesday granting 13 million dollars to Israel‘s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre
over the next 10 years. Israeli Education Minister Gideon Sa‘ar said that the agreement
constituted an important source of funding, and will be used to
expand Yad Vashem‘s activities and to locate and purchase significant
Holocaust documents from archives in Europe, making them accessible
to the public via the internet, the Jerusalem Post daily reported.

Nokia Siemens Networks, the world's second-largest maker of mobile phone network equipment, is talking to labor unions in its home countries Germany and Finland about cutting more than 4,000 jobs, part of a company-wide shakeup. The company said it aims to cut 2,900 jobs in Germany and 1,200 in Finland as part of its massive restructuring program, which aims to cut nearly a quarter of its workforce and to save about 1 billion euros ($1.31 billion) a year.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called on Tuesday for the UN Security Council to act "urgently" on Syria, telling a Cairo news conference a strong text on the crisis was "absolutely important."The situation is unacceptable and it even became worse in the last couple of days," Westerwelle said after talks with his Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Amr. "It's a drama what we are seeing at the moment in Syria.

The German government on Tuesday said it wanted to visibly increase the number of immigrants working in the public sector, after some 120 participants in a national summit in Berlin approved a plan to better integrate immigrant communities. National integration commissioner Maria Böhmer told a press conference that the public sector served as a model for the rest of the labor market, and that the government should do a better job ensuring the public sector reflects the demographics of the country.

A brutally cold high pressure system from Siberia tightened its icy grip on Central Europe on Monday, as temperatures were poised to plunge below -20 degrees Celsius later in the week. “The cold snap’s ‘highpoint’ is likely to be on Friday. The rest of the week will simply be frigid,” the German weather servive said. The eastern parts of Germany early on Monday were already hit by the Russian deep freeze, with temperatures hovering below -10 degrees. The cold air coming in from Siberia has already caused more than 30 deaths across Eastern Europe.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a television interview on Sunday he plans to introduce a 0.1 percent financial transaction tax in France in the hope that other European Union nations would follow suit amid lingering divisions within the 27-member bloc over such a measure. Although both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti support a financial transaction tax in principle, they have both said that it should be implemented at the European level and not by individual nation-states.

Germany marked Holocaust Memorial Day on Friday with a special session of parliament and a call for the nation's citizens never to forget the danger posed by right-wing extremism.

 Fitch Ratings Friday downgraded the sovereign credit ratings of five euro currency countries - Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Belgium and Cyprus, contending they lack financing flexibility in the face of the regional debt crisis. In a statement, Fitch said these countries have near-term vulnerability to monetary and financial shocks. Italy, the euro area's third-largest economy, was cut two levels to A- from A. The rating on Spain was also lowered two notches, to A from AA-. Ratings on Belgium, Slovenian and Cyprus were also lowered, while Ireland's rating was maintained.

German households have entered the new year in an
upbeat mood with consumer confidence set to rise again next month
amid growing economic expectations and hopes for higher incomes, a
survey released Thursday showed. The Nuremberg-based GfK research group said its forward-looking
consumer confidence index for Europe‘s biggest economy would climb to
5.9 points in February from an upwardly revised 5.7 points in
January. This was despite the lingering concerns about Europe‘s debt
crisis.

A British publisher says he's putting on hold plans to print excerpts of Adolf Hitler's infamous memoir Mein Kampf in Germany under the threat of legal action from the state of Bavaria.

More than 12,500 teachers will be going on strike on Thursday in protest against a new government education bill. The teachers’ union AOb has announced that around 600 schools are taking part and dozens of them will be closed for the day. The bill has already been passed by the lower house of parliament and will now go to the Senate for final approval. At the end of last year several thousand students held a protest in Amsterdam and earlier this month a smaller union held a three-day strike. The bill would fix the number of lessons at 1040 a year in the first two years of secondary school.

German automotive parts maker Bosch said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire SPX Service Solutions, a US maker of car service tools, workshop equipment and software for $1.15 billion (€883 million). Bosch said SPX Service Solutions "develops, manufactures and sells diagnostic and service tools, workshop equipment, and software for the global automotive aftermarket" and had estimated sales of $920 million last year. "The acquisition will allow us to considerably expand our market presence in the diagnostics business, particularly in North America.

European Union nations formally adopted an oil embargo against Iran on Monday, as part of its latest set of sanctions against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government. Iran is a major oil source for the European Union, especially southern members like Greece, Spain and Italy. Oil accounts for roughly 90 percent of all Iranian exports to the EU, and Europe is Tehran's second largest market after China.

Europe's biggest automaker Volkswagen will probably complete its takeover of luxury car group Porsche this year after clearing key hurdles, according to a German media report on Sunday. News weekly Der Spiegel wrote in its upcoming issue that VW, which owns 49.9 percent of Porsche, could buy the 50.1 percent stake in the manufacturer of the iconic 911 car for €3.9 billion ($5.0 billion) in 2012. Porsche has built up massive debts as it looked to seal a tie-up with VW and Der Spiegel said two previous obstacles now look surmountable.

German drugstore giant Schlecker is declaring insolvency in a desperate attempt to save stores and keep the company afloat, the company confirmed on Friday afternoon. Schlecker managers said an insolvency petition would be delivered “shortly” to a court in Baden-Württemberg, where the company is based. A planned financing package is said to have fallen through, forcing the company’s hand. The move is not expected to have an immediate impact on the company’s roughly 30,000 German employees and 17,000 abroad or result in immediate closures of its 10,000 stores.

The Securities and Exchange Commission formally approved the $10 billion acquisition by Germany's Deutsche Börse of NYSE Euronext. The SEC said it reviewed the proposal carefully and found the merger would comply with securities laws and promote fair trading. European Union officials have been closely examining whether the deal quashes competition, and they've shown few signs they'll allow it to proceed. NYSE Euronext owns the New York Stock Exchange and exchanges in Paris, Lisbon, Brussels and Amsterdam.

The German government has proposed a new database to coordinate the fight against violent neo-Nazis. It would bring together information currently stored in multiple agencies around the country. At first, Federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger was skeptical. "What would be new about such a database?" was her response to Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich's insistence on setting up a new neo-Nazi database. The idea isn't really new at all, because so-called "compound files" have been around since 2001.

Germany's government cut the country's 2012 growth forecast Wednesday in the wake of a faltering global economy and Europe's debt crisis, but said Europe's largest economy should avoid sinking back into recession. Following what is believed to have been a contraction in economic activity in the fourth quarter of 2011, Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said the government had reduced Germany's growth forecast for this year to 0.7 per cent from 1 per cent — its second reduction in three months. As recently as October, the prediction had been 1.8 per cent.

Tech giant Siemens has warned that Germany’s nuclear phase-out could cost the country nearly €2 trillion by 2030, much higher than previously estimated. “This will either be paid by energy customers or taxpayers,” the Siemens board member in charge of energy issues Michael Süß told the Reuters news service, estimating costs of about €1.7 trillion. Costs could be reduced if Germans relied more on gas, Süß said.

German carmaker BMW said it is recalling 235,000 of its Mini series worldwide because of a fault with an electric water pump which could lead cars to catch fire. The vehicles being recalled include seven models of the Mini series, ranging in model years from 2007 to 2011/ The carmaker is recalling 88,911 cars in the US and 30,000 in Britain. Safety checks revealed a problem which can cause the water pump to fail potentially causing the car to overheat. Owners will be contacted in the coming weeks to arrange a part replacement.

German investor sentiment rose strongly in January, indicating that economic activity in the country should stabilize over the next six months rather than deteriorate further, a closely watched survey showed Tuesday. The ZEW investor sentiment index for January rose 32.2 points in January, to minus 21.6 points overall. The rise puts the indicator at its highest level since last July, though ZEW noted it is still well below its historical average of plus 24.5 points.

Hollywood heartthrob Ashton Kutcher has invested in yet another Berlin start-up, taking a stake in event marketplace Gidsy. The company confirmed on Friday that it had closed its seed round and had secured funding from a number of investors, including Kutcher, who has already invested in Berlin-based companies Amen and SoundCloud. Founded by Dutch brothers Edial and Floris Dekker and Austrian Philpp Wassibauer in May 2011, Gidsy allows people to host different activities and make money in the process.

The United States will withdraw another Army combat brigade from Germany, leaving just two brigades in Europe as the military shifts to a new strategy that focuses on the Asia-Pacific region while sustaining a strong presence in the Middle East, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Thursday. He said the United States was not abandoning Europe, and would sustain sufficient forces there to maintain ties with allies. He described the changes in an interview on Thursday with American Forces Press Service, the Pentagon’s media branch.

Kirsten Dunst says she would like to pay tribute to her roots and would particularly like to work on a German film. "I really want to do a film in another language," Contactmusic quoted her as telling HitFix. "My dad's from Germany, so it'd be really cool to do a film in German, the Melancholia star said. "I'm not quite fluent, but I can get there. And my accent's pretty good. I wouldn't feel too out of my element," she said.

Germany's economy has slipped into a negative growth, albeit slightly, in the last quarter of 2011 even as it showed an overall growth of three per cent for the year, according to figures released Wednesday. Germany's statistics office, Destatis, said the annual growth rate, driven by strong growth in the first half, was achieved despite the financial crisis in Europe that has seen other nations Greece, Spain and Italy struggling with huge debts. The statistics office said that the economy contracted by 0.25 percent in the last quarter of 2011.

Debt-ridden Greece is warning that it could be forced to abandon the common euro currency if it does not secure a second international bailout to avoid defaulting on its loans, Greece won tentative European approval for the $169 billion bailout in October, but now the country is engaged in new negotiations with creditors over terms of the deal. Government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis said finalizing the bailout is essential.
Kapsis said that negotiations over the next few months will "determine everything." 

The Danish navy says it has captured a suspect pirate mothership off the Horn of Africa and rescued 14 people who were being held hostage on it.  Te navy encountered the ship Saturday and the crew boarded it.
They arrested 25 suspected pirates and freed 14 people from Iran and Pakistan. Navy spokesman Mikael Bill says the hostages are most likely fishermen who had been held for around two months and the pirates were using their fishing vessel.
They were transferred onto the HDMS Absalon, where they were able to call their families.