Berlin - Economic issues are expected to dominate Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, government sources said.

The two countries plan to sound ways to cooperate in fighting the global financial crisis, the sources said Wednesday.

Germany is the second stage of a European tour that takes the Chinese leader to Switzerland and the World Economic Forum in Davos, as well as European Union headquarters in Brussels, Spain and Britain.

Dhaka - Germany will continue aid to Bangladesh despite the global financial crisis to promote social and economic development, a senior German official said Wednesday.

"My government said very clearly, we will keep our high level of assistance and we will increase it step by step as part of our promise for the millennium development goals policy," state secretary for the Foreign Ministry of Germany Reinhard Silberberg said.

"There is a strong commitment of our government that the countries we are working with should not suffer from the international financial crisis," he sadi after meeting his Bangladesh counterpart Touhid Hossain.

Berlin - German consumer confidence continues to hold up in the face of deepening global economic gloom, a survey released Wednesday said, as falling inflation helped to offset worries about the prospects for Europe's biggest economy.

The Nuremberg-based GfK marketing institute said its forward-looking consumer confidence index came in at 2.2 points in February, which was unchanged from the January reading.

Frankfurt  - Flight attendants of Ge

Berlin - A movie about a famed 20th century Chinese opera star heads the Asian cinema lineup at next month's Berlin Film Festival.

In a sense, the story of Mei Lan-fang represents a return for Beijing-born director Chen Kaige to a familiar theme with his famed Farewell My Concubine also focusing on the stars of the Peking opera.

Farewell My Concubine won Kaige the Cannes Film Festival's prestigious Palme d'Or in 1993.

Warsaw - Best known for films heavy in history and politics, Polish director Andrzej Wajda says his film that it is to premiere at this year's Berlin Film Festival is a goodbye to that genre, and to the past.

Sweet Rush (Tatarak), which will have its world premiere in Berlin, is the 38th film from the director who has chronicled his country's painful Nazi occupation and communist past.