Berlin  - Car parts manufacturer Bosch announced plans Monday to reduce working hours for 9,000 staff, following Daimler's introduction Monday of a shortened working week for 40,000 of its employees in the German car industry.

Opel's parent, General Motors (GM), also announced Monday that it has struck a Europe-wide deal to meet a reduction in demand by cutting back on working hours in order to prevent job losses.

Berlin  - Heads of the three parties supporting German Chancellor Angela Merkel gathered in Berlin Monday for make-or-break talks on a fresh round of stimulus for the weakening German economy.

The Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Social Union (CSU) have been wrangling for weeks with Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) over the package, with each of them eager to piggy-back long- standing party policies onto the huge surge of state spending.

Hamburg, Germany  - Plastic was one of the great chemical inventions of the 20th century, but now liquid wood may be the plastic of the 21st century, according to a group of German scientists.

Plastics are non-biodegradable as well and in many cases harbour carcinogens and other toxic substances.

And apart from all that, most plastics are based on petroleum, a non-renewable resource.

Bangkok  - Thai police are investigating the possible murder of a German woman whose body was found on Phangan in the aftermath of one of the island's notorious full-moon parties, police said Monday.

The body of Astrid Al-Assaad Schachmer, 45, was discovered Sunday morning floating in shallow water off a beach on Phangan, 430 kilometres south of Bangkok.

Berlin  - As Germany begins a year thick with comemorations, tens of thousands of German leftists gathered Sunday to recall two revolutionaries who were murdered in 1919.

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, founders of the German Communist Party, were killed by rightist soldiers in the early days of the Weimar Republic and are seen by the left as martyrs.

Two separate marches were organized at the Socialist Monument in Berlin's Friedrichsfelde Cemetery.

The main body was from the Left Party, which claims descent from the Communist Party, and the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany, which has seats in the German parliament. The other group comprised far-leftists and anarchists.

Hamburg  - German 800 metres runner Rene Harms was found dead in his flat on Saturday with police saying on Sunday that a post-mortem will determine the cause of his death. He was 26.