Woringen, Germany - A German cheese factory has been ordered to suspend sales amid a wider inquiry into claims that mouldy Italian cheese had been passed off as new, police said Saturday.

Berlin - Speaking just before the G8 summit, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for the eight leading industrialized nations to lead by example with cuts in carbon emissions. 

Berlin - Facing down political and media criticism, Madame Tussaud's has defended its inclusion of an Adolf Hitler statue in a waxworks show set to open in Berlin on Saturday.

German politicians have voiced outrage at the return of the evil fuehrer to Berlin, though his image does appear regularly in German television history programmes and school textbooks about Nazi war crimes.

Opening its third waxworks museum in Europe, the British-based company, part of Merlin Entertainments, said it was not glorifying Hitler but showing him as a "broken man" on the eve of his Second World War defeat and suicide.

Hamburg - Stepping up output of its giant A380 plane, Airbus opened a second delivery centre Friday in the German city of Hamburg.

Reflecting its Franco-German heritage, the company builds the hulls of the two-deck planes in Toulouse, France and paints them and fits the seats in Hamburg, sharing out most of the work equally.

The delivery centre is an office block for the use of customers when they check out a plane before paying for it. They spend several days trying out the controls, watching videos from every seat and test-flying the jet for up to six hours before flying it away.

Berlin - Speaking just hours before the inauguration of a new US embassy in Berlin, Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Friday for the United States and Europe to unite on new

Berlin  - German factory orders fell again in May, the Ministry of Economics and Technology said Friday, dragged down by a sharp drop in domestic demand.

After slumping by 1.7 per cent in April, German industrial orders slipped by a price-and-seasonally adjusted 0.9 per cent in May, adding to expectations that Europe's biggest economy could slow as the year unfolds.

Economists had predicted the data, which is considered to be a key if volatile economic indicator, to clock up a modest 0.6 per cent gain in May.

"Industry orders in the last six months have significantly fallen from what was a high base," the economics ministry said releasing the latest data.