Berlin  - The new co-chief of the Bayreuth operatic festival in Germany, Katharina Wagner, promised in a news interview Wednesday to enable a tell-it-all inquiry into the Nazi and earlier periods of the Wagner opera event.

Historians have often suggested that all has not been told about the Wagner family's ingratiating welcome to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who was an enthusiast for the operas. Wagner, 30, had said before her Monday appointment she wanted the truth to come out.

She told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper she wanted the full history of the theatre and the summer festival organized by the Wagner family in the southern city of Bayreuth told including the "taints."

Berlin  - The German government considering giving up to 150 euros (220 dollars) in cash to shoppers to encourage them to replace power-hungry freezers and refrigerators, a senior Berlin official said on Tuesday.

This would imitate a highly successful scheme in Italy, where Rome grants tax rebates to buyers of more efficient home appliances.

Peter Hintze, a junior minister at the Economics Ministry in Berlin, told an industry audience at the IFA electrical-goods fair in Berlin that the project was still under discussion in government, which believes too much power is being wasted by old appliances.

The average German home freezer is 17 years old and the average refrigerator dates back 14 years, he said.

Berlin  - A guilt-stricken thief who had robbed the company safe burnt her ill-gotten gains amounting to several thousand euros and then scattered the ashes, police in the southern German city of N

Berlin - A majority of Germans believe Russia could stake further territorial claims along its borders, following its military incursion into Georgian territory last month, according to a poll published Tuesday.

The poll carried out by the Emnid institute found that 60 per cent of German citizens regarded the threat of further territorial claims as "realistic," whereas 34 per cent saw the incursion into Georgia as a one-off event.

Germans have some comprehension of Russian anxieties, with 63 per cent understanding that Russia feels threatened by plans to station elements of a US anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Berlin- Germany's Social Democrats (SPD), ailing in the polls, divided on policy and facing a leadership crisis, are set to name charismatic Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as their candidate for the chancellorship in elections next year, according to a report Tuesday.

Berlin - German Preident Horst Koehler began a