Berlin  - The new co-chief of the Bayreuth operatic festival in Germany, Katharina Wagner, promised in a news interview Wednesday to enable a tell-it-all inquiry into the Nazi and earlier periods of the Wagner opera event.

Historians have often suggested that all has not been told about the Wagner family's ingratiating welcome to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who was an enthusiast for the operas. Wagner, 30, had said before her Monday appointment she wanted the truth to come out.

She told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper she wanted the full history of the theatre and the summer festival organized by the Wagner family in the southern city of Bayreuth told including the "taints."

Berlin - Environmentalists plan to continue their resistance to a mega-bridge crossing the strait between Denmark and Germany despite the signing of a treaty to forge ahead with the project, a nature-protection group, NABU, said Wednesday.

They fear migrating birds will thud into the towers of the 19- kilometre suspension bridge while the piers will slow the flow of water through the Fehmarn Belt into the Baltic Sea.

Replacing car ferries that depart half-hourly round the clock will take about an hour off the 4.5-hour, straight-line motorway drive from the Danish capital Copenhagen to the German city of Hamburg.

Hamburg - The legendary Ford Capri is to return in a new guise with a concept study set to be unveiled at next year's Frankfurt Motor Show, Germany's auto-motor-sport magazine reports.

While the last original Capri in 1986 featured rear-wheel drive with a six cylinder engine, the new version would be built on an existing platform with front-wheel drive, the magazine reports.

Drawings published by the magazine show a fresh style with some typical Capri features, but a larger front grille with air intakes. The headlights are embedded in the fenders. Narrow side windows contrast with a large sloping windscreen.

Ruesselsheim, Germany - Opel will unveil a station wagon version of its new Insignia at the Paris Motor Show in October called the Sports Tourer.

It is to go on sale in early 2009 and features a long sloping roofline and wraparound tailgate with fully integrated large rear lights.

Measuring 4.91 metres in length, the car is also eight centimetres higher than the sedan version. Opel lists the load volume at 540 litres, some 10 litres more than the predecessor Vectra Caravan.

Cologne, Germany - Rising petrol prices and environmental ills are a fine argument in favour of fuel cell cars driven by electric power generated from hydrogen.

Yet strangely enough, carmakers are not currently singing the praises of this technology.

It sounds almost too good to be true, but cars which run on hydrogen fuel cells emit only water vapour into the atmosphere and in contrast to oil, hydrogen is not a fossil fuel with only limited reserves. In fact it is the most common element on the planet.

Leipzig, Germany  - Far rightists, who have latched onto the sex murder of a little girl in Germany to call for the death penalty for child rape, have been accused by a city mayor and other national figures of exploiting the bereaved family's anguish.

German tabloids have been running sensational daily accounts of the death of Michelle, 8, and the so-far unsuccessful police hunt for her murderer in the eastern German city of Leipzig.