Berlin - German auto parts groups Continental AG said Thursday it had slumped into the red last year amid growing uncertainty about the group's future and a deepening sense of crisis gripping the global car sector.

Hanover-based Continental booked a net loss of 1.12 billion euros (1.4 billion dollars) in 2008. That compares with a 1.02-billion-euro profit in 2007, the year of the group's debt-based 11.4-billion-euro purchase of the car parts company VDO from Siemens.

Berlin - The German government set the framework Wednesday for the state nationalization of failing banks as a measure of last resort.

The cabinet approved legislation on so-called rescue takeover procedures, government sources said Wednesday.

The ruling is specifically tailored to troubled mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate, and states that any nationalization process would need to be initiated by late June.

The legislation stresses that a complete state takeover of a bank would be the final resort in efforts to help stabilize Germany's financial markets.

Berlin  - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seizing the initiative in facing up to the global financial crisis, as the host of talks Sunday with her European counterparts.

With the prospect of German elections in September, clouded by the country's biggest economic downturn in 60 years, Merkel has stepped

out of her previous inertia and summoned the heads of Europe's biggest economies to find common ground.

Berlin  - Two of the cowshed germs that immunize many farm children against allergies have been tracked down, scientists said in Berlin Tuesday, adding that the bacteria might be used in future as a vaccine.

A study of Austrian, German and Swiss children has found that village children in the Alps who have no early contact with cows are far more likely to develop hay fever and allergies to house dust than farm children who are exposed to those bacteria.

Berlin - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier arrived Tuesday in Iraq, marking a reawakening of ties between the two countries after German opposition to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The aim of the trip, which is the first visit to Baghdad by a German foreign minister in 22 years, is to strengthen German-Iraqi relations and discuss the current situation in Iraq and the region.