Potsdam, Germany  - Negotiators representing Germany's 16 state governments consented Sunday to pay rises of about 5 per cent for government employees, averting more of the strikes that have disrupted education and other public services for weeks.

If union members accept the deal announced Sunday in Potsdam, near Berlin, by Lower Saxony Finance Minister Hartmut Moellring and Verdi trade union leader Frank Bsirske, some 700,000 non-tenured employees would receive staged rises effective this week.

The terms are likely to be extended to hundreds of thousands of other German public servants who work alongside unionized staff.

Potsdam, Germany - Some 63 years after the end of World War II, a German prince is trying to secure the return of land and property seized from his family after an abortive bomb plot against Hitler.

Prince Friedrich zu Solms-Baruth, 45, is due to appear before an administrative court in Potsdam, near Berlin, on Thursday to pursue a claim against the Brandenburg state government.

The prince claims that after German reunification, his own father had "fought the German authorities tirelessly for restitution of the family's estates and property - until his death in January 2006."