Munich - The alleged kingpin of the main Russian organized-crime family in Germany's Bavaria state went on trial Friday.

Lawyers for the alleged mobsters showered the court with motions to stop the trial. Security at the Munich courthouse was strict.

The defendant, 39, was indicted with running a criminal organization.

Two alleged mafia lieutenants, aged 31 and 30, are accused of being members of the crime syndicate, which allegedly ran protection rackets, trafficked drugs and spread counterfeit money in the prosperous state starting in 2001.

Berlin - Grandparents in Germany won the right to unpaid leave from work to care fo

Berlin - German experts compiling a brief for the G20 summit in Washington are to call for a revision of the way banking executives are paid and a worldwide loan registry, sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Friday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck commissioned the experts to rapidly draft a set of proposals and report back Friday.

Led by Otmar Issing, a former chief economist of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, they said short-term performance bonuses for financial executives had been a significant cause of the global financial crisis.

Bayreuth, Germany  - Katharina Wagner, 30, co-director of the Wagner Opera Festival in Germany, survived uninjured after the driver of her car died at high speed, aides said Friday.

Stefan Mueller, the festival lawyer, died of a heart attack as he and Wagner were on the autobahn home from Berlin just before midnight Thursday. From the front passenger seat, she steered the car to the roadside and stopped it.

Festival spokesman Peter Emmerich said she was unhurt. After stopping, she vainly tried to resuscitate Mueller and called an ambulance and highway police near the Bavarian town of Hof.

She and her half-sister, Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 63, became directors of the festival in September, taking over from their father, Wolfgang Wagner, 89.

Berlin  - Russia's ambassador in Germany, Vladimir Kotenyev, affirmed Friday that the Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea would be built.

Speaking two days after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Moscow would be just as ready to export its natural gas by ship, the ambassador said on ARD public television that Russia remained committed to the pipe.

"As far as Russia is concerned, this means a stable supply of gas to Europe," he said.

"Mr Putin was not making any threat," he added.

The controversy blew up as the Russians were about to meet with European Union leaders in Nice, France.

Berlin, Nov 14 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus.

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by the US- UK-Dutch Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS).