Berlin - Christian Democrat (CDU) Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged continued cooperation with the Social Democrats (SPD) in her grand coalition government Monday, after the SPD named Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to challenge her in German elections next year.

Merkel criticized the weekend manoeuvring in her junior coalition partner that saw the popular Steinmeier named as the SPD candidate for the chancellorship and Kurt Beck ousted as party chairman.

Berlin - Young Selena crouches under the bed when the Nazi officer comes even closer to her hiding place. She can see her own face reflected in his shiny boots.

"I was afraid he could hear my heart beating," Selena recalled decades later. The Nazi did not, in the end, discover the Jewish girl in the Bialystok ghetto in Poland. But the shooting in front of the house and the crying of hundreds of orphans haunted Selena B. all her life.

Loitsche, Germany  - A wooden bus shelter covered with graffiti has been cut up and sold by auction to teenage girls eager for a souvenir of the German-based pop band Tokio Hotel.

Birgit Erdmann, who managed the sale as an agent, said Monday that prices had been modest and the sale had brought practically no profit to the local authority of Loitsche, the small town in central Germany where the group's stalwarts, Bill and Tom Kaulitz, grew up.

The most distant buyer was someone in La Spezia, Italy. Tokio Hotel, which has a worldwide following, won the Best New Artist award on Sunday at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles.

Frankfurt - The DAX index of the 30 top German shares clawed back much of last week's losses in early trade Monday, rising more than 3 per cent on news of a government bail-out for battered US mor

Beijing - German President Horst Koehler left China Monday on board a commercial Air China flight because of technical problems with his German air force plane.

The Airbus Konrad Adenauer could not be repaired in time, forcing Koehler and his 50-member delegation to fly to Frankfurt with the commercial airline.

During his three-day visit to Beijing, Koehler attended the opening of the Paralympics, the Olympic games for athletes with disabilities.

The German president said he wanted to send a sign of encouragement for the integration of the physically disabled into society.

Hamburg - Birds recognise their own reflection in the mirror as being themselves and not that of another bird, according to German researchers.

The recognition of "self" has been known to exist among primates such as chimpanzees and orang-utans.

There have also been reports that dolphins and elephants share the same ability.

All these animals live in a complex social world, as do humans, which experts believe may be linked to self-recognition.