Ludwigshafen,
Germany - Chemical giant BASF announced Wednesday that it was slashing
production worldwide because of a dramatic fall in demand.

The company said it was temporarily shutting down around 80 plants across the globe and reducing production in 100.

Some
20,000 employees would be affected, BASF said in a statement. Flexible
working time arrangements will be used wherever possible, it said.

"We
already drew attention to the difficult economic situation at the end
of October. Since then, customer demand in key markets has declined
significantly," board chairman Juergen Hambrecht said.

Frankfurt - Rose Kabuye, 47, a senior Rwandan politician, was extradited Wednesday from Germany to France, where she is wanted for questioning in connection with a 1994 assassination.

German federal police said she left on a flight from Frankfurt to Paris in the early afternoon.

Since arresting her on November 9 when she arrived by plane, Germany had been waiting for French police to pick her up. She was wanted under a European arrest warrant issued by the French.

Last week, Kabuye agreed to fast-track extradition and German judges approved her being handed over to France.

Hamburg - Laurent Nkunda, the rebel chief whose armies have swept aside Congolese government forces, aims to take over the whole of the Democratic Republic of Congo, he said in an interview published Wednesday in Germany.

He told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit that under his leadership, the DR Congo would take over a seat representing Africa in the United Nations Security Council within five years.

His forces have won control in tracts of the east of the DR Congo.

Bonn, Germany - A David-and-Goliath takeover offer for the German factories of General Motors sent the share price of the bidding company, SolarWorld, crashing
16 per cent lower Wednesday.

SolarWorld, which assembles and installs electricity generating systems that rely on wind or the sun, offered 1 billion euros (1.25 billion dollars) for the Opel brand, four factories and a German research centre.

It said it intended to convert Opel into "Europe's first green automobile maker."

New Delhi - India and Germany plan to discuss responses to the global financial crisis and ways to deal with climate change during the visit of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier due to begin Wednesday night, officials said.

Steinmeier scheduled talks with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and opposition leader LK Advani on Thursday.

Frankfurt - Only the sky was the limit when Yvonne Buschbaum soared to big heights as one of the leading women's pole vaulters in Germany.

Now the sky is wide open for Buschbaum, who feels the lightness of being after revealing her transsexuality last year and undergoing a gender change to Balian Buschbaum since then.

"Courage is the road to freedom. I woke up in complete freedom today. The sky is wide open," said a recent diary entry on his website.