Bayreuth, Germany  - The first live, free screening of a Wagner opera on a giant outdoor display in Bayreuth, Germany proved popular, with a gate of 38,000, festival organizers said Monday.

The number includes multiple comings and goings during the event Sunday afternoon on a Bayreuth square, so the number of unique persons who attended was far lower, festival spokesman Peter Emmerich said. Only 15,000 were allowed on the site at one time.

"The broadcast was technically perfect too," he said.

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said Monday it had surpassed the rival Social Democratic Party (SPD) on the basis of membership figures for the first time since being founded in 1945.

CDU General Secretary Ronald Pofalla said the party now numbered 530,755 members.

According to figures from the end of last month, the SPD, Germany's oldest political formation, had 529,994 members.

London - The wreck of a World War I German submarine buried in the English Channel between Britain and France since 1918 has been moved to deeper waters to prevent it posing a risk to large vessels passing overhead, it was revealed Monday.

The UB38 U-boat which had lain undisturbed off the coast of Dover, southern Britain, was moved earlier this month because of growing concern over the increasingly deep draught of modern vessels navigating the English Channel, one of the world's busiest waterways.

Hamburg - European aircraft manufacturer Airbus delivered the first A380 from its Hamburg plant Monday, handing over the superjumbo jet to Dubai's Emirates airline at a colourful ceremony attended by the chief executives of the two companies and hundreds of staff.

The aircraft is the first of 58 ordered by Emirates, which is to date the largest customer for the flagship of the Airbus fleet.

Emirates chief Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said the American continent was one of the company's key markets and that the airline was pleased to be the first to enter the US market with the new A380.

Nuremberg, Germany - Fears of a looming recession have further worried Germans, with the monthly GfK index of consumer sentiment dipping Monday to its lowest level since June 2003.

Nuremberg-based GfK, which surveys panels of consumers, forecast an August consumer climate at 2.1 on its own index scale, a marked fall from the July level of 3.6, as households took stock of gloomy financial news and rising fuel prices.

Many householders who were cheered by pay hikes earlier in the year reported fresh worries that inflation would claw back their gains. This drove GfK's separate index of income expectations down to minus 20, the lowest level since August 2004.

But a further index, reflecting interest in buying things, was only slightly down.

Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday condemned the double bomb blasts that hit a crowded street in Istanbul as "a blind act of terrorism."