Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel added her voice Wednesday to calls for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to step down.

"Especially in Zimbabwe's case, we must do our very best to attain life without the terrors of President Mugabe," she said in Berlin in a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Berlin - Chancellor Angela Merkel's government approved Wednesday the use of a German ship in a European Union anti-piracy mission off Somalia that was formally constituted two days earlier.

Germany has promised a naval frigate, the Karlsruhe, and up to 1,400 sailors, airmen and other military personnel, but must wait till its parliament has given authorization.

That is expected to happen on December 19, with the authorization running till December 15, 2009.

The EU expects to operate a flotilla of six warships and three reconnaissance planes in the area, with seven EU nations involved in the operation code-named Atalanta.

Berlin  - German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke into a broad grin when her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) overwhelmingly reelected her chairman at a party convention early December.

It was welcome relief for the party leader, whose low-key response to the global financial upheaval has disappointed Germany's neighbours and raised questions by some in the conservative camp.

An economic stimulus package of more than 30 billion euros (38 billion dollars) was seen as too little and also led to opposition charges that Germany had sleepwalked into the crisis.

Berlin  - The year 2008 can certainly be titled a year of extremes: it saw huge trauma, beginning in the shadow of the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto just days earlier and ending with a global market crisis that has brought despair to millions across the world - and yet the worst is still to come.

The final months of the year were marred by attacks, with hundreds dead in India's bustling commercial metropolis of Mumbai, chaos in Thailand, pirates in the Gulf of Aden and continuing violence in the world's top conflict regions Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Middle East is still far from a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians, or indeed between Palestinians and Palestinians.

Berlin  - A banking unit of Volkswagen AG that helps buyers to finance cars said Tuesday it was seeking assistance from the German government's bail-out scheme for banks.

Financial Services AG and Volkswagen Bank have requested an undisclosed amount in credit guarantees from Sofin, a federal government agency with a 480-billion-euro
(618-billion-dollar) war chest.

The credit crunch has made it more difficult for banks to obtain funding on capital markets.

The government fund was set up in October to stabilize the banking industry by providing credit guarantees and capital injections.

Berlin - A study which found one near-miss happens every day in the skies over Germany, and that some pilots react incorrectl in such situationsy, is to be examined by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

Academics said Tuesday they set up a listening post on the ground to see what happens when the airborne collision avoidance system (ACAS) triggers in two jets flying straight at one another. ACAS devices negotiate with one another.

Typically, one pilot is told to descend and the other to pull up so that the planes may pass one another safely.