Berlin - The European Union signed an agreement with Kenya on Friday, providing for the handover of pirates seized off the coast of Somalia, a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

The agreement was signed in Nairobi by Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetang'ula and the Czech ambassador to Kenya, the spokesman said. The Czech Republic holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

The spokesman said no decision had been made whether nine pirates captured by the German Navy would be transferred to Kenya.

Berlin - German government officials held a fresh round of talks on Friday with representatives of ailing US carmaker General Motors (GM) and its German subsidiary Opel.

The meeting at Chancellor Angela Merkel's office in Berlin discussed state aid for the GM offshoot, which reportedly needs 7 billion euros (8.87 billion dollars) to stay afloat.

GM presented its own rescue plan to the government on Monday, but Merkel told the company's head of European operations, Carl-Peter Forster, that the measures did not go far enough.

Berlin - German prosecutors on Thursday searched the Berlin office of a Social Democrat (SPD) education spokesman on suspicion of child pornography.

The 55-year old parliamentarian, Joerg Tauss, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa he could not explain what prompted the search. "I'm calmly waiting," he said. "I can't understand it."

Tauss has been a member of the lower house or Bundestag since 1994 and is the SPD's parliamentary spokesman on research and education.

Berlin, March 5 : A team of leading astronomers, optical engineers and science educators has designed the Galileoscope - a high quality, easy-to-assemble and easy-to-use telescope, which would make the wonders of the night sky more accessible to everyone.

The Galileoscope was developed as a Cornerstone project of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009).

By encouraging the experience of personally seeing celestial objects, the Galileoscope project aims to facilitate a main goal of IYA2009: promoting widespread access to new knowledge and observing opportunities.

Observing through a telescope for the first time is an experience that shapes our view of the sky and the Universe.

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet agreed Wednesday on the structure of a 100-billion-euro (125 billion dollars) government fund to aid struggling firms.

Companies hard hit by the global economic downturn will be able to apply for state assistance from the first half of March under the terms of the deal that runs until the end of
2009.