Berlin - Music by the Polish-born Israeli composer Yehezkel Braun opens Berlin's Jewish Cultural Festival, which begins in the German capital on Saturday.

The official opening of the 22nd festival takes place on Saturday evening with a concert in the synagogue in Rykestrasse, the largest in Germany and one of the few to have survived World War II.

Ernst-Senff-Chof directs the Hamburg ensemble Resonanz in a performance of Braun's music composed for use in a religious context. The soloist is Mimi Sheffer.

Simultaneously the traditional "long night of the synagogues" begins at five separate venues, where visitors can experience Jewish culture.

Berlin - Some 30,000 workers rallied at Volkswagen's Wolfsburg headquarters Friday in support of retaining the "VW law" that gives enhanced rights to the German state of Lower Saxony, in the face of calls for its abolition from the European Commission.

The rally was called after the commissioner for the European Union's internal market and services, Charlie McCreevy, said this week he would take the German federal government to the European Court of Justice over the issue.

Berlin - Germany's most senior policeman, Joerg Ziercke, softened Thursday his warning against attacks by Islamist terrorists, saying there was no concrete evidence that anyone was currently planning such an attack.

Ziercke, who heads the BKA federal crime bureau, said on ZDF breakfast television, "One must however stress that we are part of a worldwide zone that is in danger."

His remarks, on the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington with hijacked airliners, followed a more ominous interpretation of his assessment Thursday by the German newspaper Bild.

Berlin  - Lower Saxony may buy 5 per cent more of carmaker Volkswagen if the state fails to win its battle with the European Union over special voting rights at the company, Premier Christian Wulff said Wednesday.

The European Union resumed Tuesday its assault on Lower Saxony's claim to special veto rights through its 20.1-per-cent stake in the carmaker. German corporate law normally reserves such rights to a shareholder with 25 per cent or more of a company.

Berlin - A senior German official responded calmly Wednesday to the Pentagon's cancellation of a tendering competition for US Air Force tankers.

An aerial refuelling Airbus jet made by the European aerospace and defence group EADS had initially been chosen by the Pentagon, but the tender was re-opened. That review is now being frozen until next year.

Peter Hintze, a junior economy minister who is also the German government's coordinator on aerospace policy, said: "The US government's decision is evidently because of the US presidential election."

Berlin - The release of Valkyrie, a controversial World War Two movie starring Tom Cruise, has been set for December and January, Twentieth Century Fox said Wednesday in Berlin.

The movie tells the true-life story of one of Germany's few war heroes: Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944 and was executed by the Nazis when the coup attempt failed.

Many Germans were not only unsettled by the return of swastikas and jackboots to Berlin streets during the 2007 filming, but also by the casting. Cruise has been widely criticized in Germany because of his Scientology beliefs.