Hamburg - Carmakers struggling to fund lease purchase sales may turn to a German government fund originally devised to bail out banks, according to a news report Saturday.

The financial services divisions of most automakers hold banking licences in Germany and could qualify for guarantees. Interest rates on those guarantees average about 
2 per cent annually, which is significantly cheaper than commercial borrowing rates in the current credit crunch.

Berlin - Germans must act against racism in general and anti-Semitism in particular, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday, a day before Germany marks a 1938 pogrom against Jewish residents.

Ceremonies were to be held Sunday to recall Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis smashed up Jewish-owned shops, burned or ransacked synagogues and killed 91 people throughout Germany, according to the official toll.

Stuttgart - Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton expects next season's title race to be as difficult as this year's one.

The 23-year-old Briton managed to overtake Germany's Timo Glock on the final bend on the final lap of the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday to move to fifth place, thereby winning the title by one point from race winner Ferrari's Felipe Massa.

Speaking at the traditional Stars&Cars function in Stuttgart on Saturday - Hamilton greeted the 65,000 racing enthusiasts in German - the McLaren-Mercedes driver said that he will obviously try to repeat his success.

Berlin  - Thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators were trying Saturday to obstruct a tightly guarded convoy of spent nuclear fuel on its way to a German waste dump.

Near the warehouse in Gorleben in the northern German countryside where many tons of radioactive waste are stored, more than 6,000 militants thronged roads just before a protest rally.

Kiev/Aachen, Germany - The management of a Ukrainian art museum on Saturday refused to return to Germany dozens of paintings brought to the Soviet Union as a result of the Second World War.

Officials from the Simferopol Art Museum in south Ukraine told Germany's Foreign Ministry the museum "had no plans to give up" the 87 paintings thought originally to have belonged to the Suermondt- Ludwig Art Museum in the German city Aachen, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

Berlin  - Germany is to end its long-standing coolness to the US-backed government of Iraq, sending its foreign minister to Baghdad next year, Foreign Ministry aides confirmed Saturday.

The change would be a gesture of support for the Mideast policies of US president-elect Barack Obama, one newspaper, Handelsblatt, was set to report on Monday, quoting senior German Foreign Ministry officials.