Frankfurt  - On the fifth day of rolling strikes in Germany's most important factories, the IG Metall trade union said it would rule next Tuesday on whether to escalate the wage battle into an all-out strike.

An Opel car plant owned by General Motors west of Frankfurt was idled on Wednesday for hours as 6,000 workers attended a rally outside the gates to support IG Metall's demand for an 8-per-cent pay hike.

Frankfurt  - Germany's car industry on Tuesday cut its 2008 sales forecast in the wake of the global financial crisis and the deepening sense of economic gloom facing the Europe's biggest auto market.

The Federation of the German Automotive Industry Association (VDA) said that it expects new car registrations to come in at 3.1 million this year instead of a previous forecast of 3.2 million.

"The extent and the speed of the impact of the financial crisis on stock markets and the real economy was essentially not forecast," said VDA President Matthias Wissmann.

Frankfurt - Two key German banks announced Monday they were tapping the government's 470-billion-bank-euro (600-billion-dollar) rescue fund in the wake of the world financial crisis.

While Germany's second biggest bank Commerzbank AG said it was seeking an 8.2 billion-euro capital injection after reporting a third-quarter loss, state controlled HSH Nordbank AG said it had turned to the fund for 30 billion euros in debt guarantees after posting a nine-month loss.

Frankfurt - The Frankfurt Stock Exchanged altered its rules Friday to prevent its three main indexes ever being distorted again by a crisis like this week's short squeeze on Volkswagen.

Stock in the German carmaker tripled on Monday and Tuesday to 1,000 euros a share after luxury car company Porsche revealed it owned or had options on 74 per cent of the stock. In August the stock had hovered near 200 euros.

Frankfurt  - German book publishers on Thursday denounced this week's historic accord between Google and US authors, dubbing it "a Trojan Horse" which would make the US company the master of the world's knowledge.

Google, which has scanned 7 million books to include their contents in its internet search engine, announced Tuesday it would let US users read the pages of books that are out of print but are still in copyright.

Under the settlement with the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, royalties will be paid for past and future use of the books by Google.

Frankfurt - Shares in Volkswagen AG rose 7.8 per cent Thursday after Europe's biggest carmaker reported a rise in earnings for the first nine months of the year and confirmed the group's 2008 outlook despite the global financial crisis.

Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen said operating profit in the first nine months of the year rose 15 per cent to 4.9 billion euros (6.4 billion dollars) after third-quarter operating profit rose 1.8 per cent to almost 1.49 billion euros.