Hamburg - Snow and ice played havoc on German roads, causing numerous accidents that left two dead and more than a dozen injured, police said Saturday.

The abrupt arrival of winter turned roads in skating rinks, forcing police to close the A4 autobahn near the eastern city of Dresden for several hours after it was blocked by trucks unable to move forward.

Berlin - The US economy needs 300-600 billion dollars in additional support measures to help it weather the financial crisis, billionaire George Soros was quoted as saying by German news magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday.

"A major stimulus programme" was needed to help the ailing economy and provide US cities and states with sufficient cash, said Soros, one of the world's richest men. In addition, an infrastructure programme was needed, he said.

Berlin - Germany, the first of the G7 powers to declare an official recession, can expect more bad news on the economic front in 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview released Saturday.

"We have to be prepared for the fact that the coming year, at least in the first few months, will be a year of bad news," she told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

She said the current business climate made it much more difficult to predict how the economies of Germany, its partners in Europe and the world at large would develop.

Berlin  - Two reeling German banks tapped state funds for billions of euros in aid Friday.

Hypo Real Estate (HRE), the first German bank to nearly collapse in September, said it won 20 billion euros (25 billion dollars) in guarantees from Soffin, a federal government agency with a 480-billion-euro war chest.

HRE said the underpinning from Frankfurt-based Soffin would improve its liquidity and help it refinance debt that falls due up to January 15, 2009.

The Munich-based mortgage lender was rescued by an earlier, 50-billion-euro batch of guarantees from the government and other commercial banks.

The other bank needing a bail-out was one of Germany's nine landesbanks, which are run by various state governments.

Berlin - Berlin refused to comment Friday on the arrest in Kosovo of three Germans in connection with an attack on the European Union (EU) headquarters in Pristina.

A German Government spokesman declined to be drawn on speculation about the possible involvement of Berlin's security services (BND) in the case and instead pointed to the ongoing investigations.

Berlin, Nov 21st, 2008 : UAE kept its dreams alive with an impressive win over Monaco, 3 -1, in the seventh round of the 2008 World Chess Olympiad at the International Congress Centre in Dresden, Germany, yesterday.

Over 1527 players representing 141 countries are participating in the 38th Olympiad, the largest chess Olympiad ever and one of the biggest international competitions in any sport.