Berlin, Apr. 11 : Germany's Der Speiegel magazine has claimed in one of its reports that US President Barack Obama uttered three words that amount to a US confession for causing the financial crisis and "may go down in world history as one of the greatest statements ever made."

What, pray tell, did the president say?

"I take responsibility."

Berlin - Germany is to help pay for the restoration of a church badly damaged in this week's earthquake in central Italy, the foreign ministry said on Friday. The building involved is the 18th century church in the village of Onna. The village was almost completely flattened in the quake, which claimed more than 200 lives.

Germany's contribution to the relief effort was discussed earlier Friday in a telephone conversation between Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Italian counterpartFranco Frattini.

Berlin (Germany), Apr. 10 : Germany is to stage the controversial Mel Brooks musical "The Producers" for the first time amid a debate over whether the country is ready to laugh at its Nazi past.

According to The Telegraph, the show, which opens in May, is being staged at the theatre where Hitler once watched a wartime version of The ''Merry Widow''

Aschaffenburg, Germany - So ancient is Europe that even a "new" building often seems as battered and worn as an "old" one. East of Frankfurt, restorers have struggled to remove the scars of nearly 160 years from a reproduction Roman villa which used to offer a vision of luxury living in the Italian city of Pompeii before a volcanic eruption on August 24 in 79 AD.

Heidelberg, Germany  - Heidelberg Cement, the indebted German building materials group, is seeking an infusion of 3 billion euros (4 billion dollars), the newspaper Financial Times Deutschland reported Thursday.

Quoting a "person familiar with the situation," it said the procedure to raise the money had begun. Heidelberg Cement had spoken with various potential new investors, but it was proving difficult to raise funds without ceding control.

Amman  - Two agreements were signed in Amman Thursday under which the German government extended 92.5 million euros (122.8 million dollars) in economic aid to Jordan, an official statement said.

The two accords, part of the German development cooperation programme with Jordan for the fiscal year 2008-2009, were signed by the Jordanian Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Suhair al-Ali and the German ambassador in Amman Joachim Heidorn.