Berlin - The German government will take a 25 per cent cent stake plus one share in the country's second biggest bank, Commerzbank, the bank announced Thursday.

Commerzbank said the move is in return for a fresh injection of capital by the state rescue fund Soffin, amounting to 10 billion euros (13.56 billion dollars).

Commerzbank, which is poised to take over rival Dresdner Bank at the end of January, has already received 8.2 billion euros in capital and guarantees of 15 billion euros from Soffin.

London - Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said he expects to be without William Gallas and Mikael Silvestre for up to three weeks because of injury.

Gallas has a hamstring injury, while Silvestre suffered a thigh injury in the FA Cup win over Plymouth last weekend.

Wenger said Denilson and Toure would return for the visit of Bolton on Saturday.

"Kolo and Denilson will be back available," Wenger said. "However unfortunately we have lost William Gallas with a hamstring problem.

Moscow/Brussels  - Russian gas monopolist Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz will sit for further face-to-face talks as soon as both leave Brussels on Thursday to fly to Moscow on the same airplane, Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said.

"We flew to Brussels on the same flight. That is why we don't need to hold special talks in Brussels. We plan to fly to Russia together," Miller was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying in Brussels.

Vienna - Austria's government and the country's automotive industry on Thursday agreed on measures to alleviate the effects of the crisis gripping the global car industry.

The measures include prolonging the time that short-time work is subsidised with public funds, as well as funding for innovative research, Chancellor Werner Faymann and Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Josef Proell said after the government's meeting with industry leaders.

Berlin  - The German government will take a 25 per cent cent stake plus one share in one of the country's leading banks, Commerzbank, sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Thursday.

The newspaper Die Welt said the move was in return for a 10 billion-euro (13.56 billion dollars) injection of capital.

Earlier in the day, Commerzbank became the first German lender to issue a bond backed by state guarantees. The bank set the size of the bond at 5 billion euros.

Prague  - The European Union Thursday repeated its call for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East after a UN driver bringing aid to Gaza was killed in Israeli fire.

"This is another gruesome incident after a UN-administered school was hit," Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country chairs the EU until June 30, said in a statement.

"We are repeating our call: it is impossible to delay a ceasefire," he said.