Berlin  - Barack Obama would be a shoo-in for US president if Germans instead of Americans were voting: a poll released Sunday showed 72 per cent of Germans prefer the candidate for the Democratic nomination to his Republican rival John McCain.

The survey of 501 Germans by Emnid pollsters for the German Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag showed the presumptive Republican nominee had just 11 per cent of Germans behind him.

Asked what the next US president should do first, 34 per cent of respondents said he should beat world poverty and undernourishment.

Separately, the news weekly Der Spiegel said senior German officials had pressed Obama to stage a major public speech in the heart of Berlin when he visits Europe later this month.

Berlin - German industrial production fell sharply in May, data released Monday showed, signalling that the upswing in Europe's biggest economy could be coming to an end.

The Ministry of Economics and Technology said output slipped by a price-and-seasonally adjusted 2.4 per cent in May after falling by 0.2 per cent in April. Production dropped by a downwardly revised 0.8 per cent in March.

Adding to evidence that the German economy could be heading for a slowdown as the year unfolds, data released last week showed German factory orders falling for the sixth consequence month in May.

Berlin - Germany sharply condemned on Monday the suicide bombing outside the Indian embassy in Kabul, saying the terrorists were trying to obstruct good government and democracy in Afghanistan.

Berlin - A man tore off the wax head of an effigy of Adolf Hitler in Berlin on

Berlin - Speaking just before the G8 summit, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for the eight leading industrialized nations to lead by example with cuts in carbon emissions. 

Berlin - Facing down political and media criticism, Madame Tussaud's has defended its inclusion of an Adolf Hitler statue in a waxworks show set to open in Berlin on Saturday.

German politicians have voiced outrage at the return of the evil fuehrer to Berlin, though his image does appear regularly in German television history programmes and school textbooks about Nazi war crimes.

Opening its third waxworks museum in Europe, the British-based company, part of Merlin Entertainments, said it was not glorifying Hitler but showing him as a "broken man" on the eve of his Second World War defeat and suicide.