Berlin - Porsche inaugurated Wednesday an audaciously designed museum to house the sports car maker's collection of 80 classic cars and lure tourists to the German city of Stuttgart.

The steel-framed, aluminium-sheathed building, looking like a piece of giant origami, has most of its sculpted walls tilting outwards and symbolizes the predator-animal spirit that many Porsche drivers mentally associate with their upmarket brand.

Berlin - Three-quarters of Germans would welcome "a German Obama," telling pollsters a politician with the US president's charisma would do Germany good, the magazine Stern said Wednesday.

The poll, by the Forsa company, found 76 per cent were impressed by the US president, while 14 per cent said they would prefer not to have someone like Obama on the ballot and 10 per cent did not know.

The only major foreign speech of Obama's campaign for the presidency was in Germany last June, with hundreds of thousands of people crowded Berlin's Tiergarten park to get a close-up look at the candidate.

Berlin - A new Islamist video found on the internet in which a terrorist threatens an attack on Germany was made by a different group to one that surfaced two weeks ago, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The new video appeared to have been made by the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), a shadowy group based in Pakistan or Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor's Office said.

The group is seen by some as effectively taking the place of al-Qaeda as a principal threat to the West.

Berlin - The national anthem sounded shortly before midnight Tuesday and Erik Zabel got a bunch of flowers from his parents as he stepped off his bicycle for good.

Victory with Robert Bartko in the Berlin six-days marked the end of a 16-year career which saw him win a record six Tour de France sprint titles and make a tearful doping confession.

"I went to school 400 metres from here, started cycling at the local club and today it is over," the 38-year-old told the fans in the Berlin velodrome.

Berlin - The Berlin Film Festival has never been shy of tackling the big issues of the day.

And this year is no exception, with the major theme of next month's Berlinale program the global financial turmoil that has pushed the international economy into a major slowdown, sent banks to the wall and played havoc with ordinary people's lives.

Opening the festival - one of the world's top three international film festivals - is an action thriller by German-born director Tom Tykwer about the illegal activities of the world's biggest banks.

Berlin  - German police are checking yet another Islamist video found on the internet in which a terrorist threatens an attack on Germany, ARD television news reported Tuesday.

The video appeared to have been made about a week ago by the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), a shadowy group based in Pakistan or Afghanistan that some see as effectively taking the place of al-Qaeda as a principal threat to the West.