Germany declines old document funds
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The German Parliament has refused to provide $2.8 million to go toward reassembling historic records torn up by East Germany after the Berlin Wall fell.
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German papers on Friday are unenthusiastic about Chancellor Angela Merkel's meeting with the Chinese premier.
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U.S. may decrease the amount of time European passenger data is saved.
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The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) said Switzerland had agreed to write off SFr264 million ($227 million) in debts dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.
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German holders of bad Argentine bonds are having none of the South American nation's push to exchange them for new ones, asking why they should trade old funny money for what they suspect will turn out to be ...
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A Berlin court on Monday rejected a claim for compensation from a fund for Nazi-era slave laborers by two former Italian soldiers interned by Germany after Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943.
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Â· Vote would block funds for eastern Europe projectÂ· Committee says system too costly and untested
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Papers in Germany reflect on the lessons of the Holocaust
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Germany does not expect to take a direct stake in aerospace group EADS  via state bank KfW or other federal or state institutions, a senior government official told Reuters on Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - In a surprise move, the European Commission said Wednesday it is shelving plans to overhaul Europeâs rules on copyright fees, after intense lobbying from France and from groups representing artists and authors. The Commission, the executive body of the European Union, was planning to replace the patchwork of national rules with a Europe-wide code designed to better suit the digital age. Presently most countries impose copyright levies on a wide range of products, from photocopiers to mobile phones, and including recordable formats such as CD-Rs, blank cassettes and even paper. The size of levies varies widely from country to country. Only the U.K., Ireland, and Luxembourg do not impose any such levies. Copyright levies are supposed to compensate artists and authors who donât receive any payment when their copyrighted music, documents, or pictures are duplicated by consumers. The Commission wanted to harmonize the rules and scrap levies on most hardware. Its aim was to reduce the fees, which in some cases increase the price of goods dramatically. For example, in Spain consumers have to pay almost â¬300 ($398) in levies when they buy an 80GB MP3 player; in Austria the equivalent charge is just â¬8, according to the Copyright Levies Reform Alliance (CLRA), a coalition of businesses dedicated to harmonizing and lowering copyright fees in Europe. The Commission said it was abandoning the rule change for now. It had planned to publish a proposal before the end of this year. âMore reflection is needed on this complex issue,â spokeswoman Pia AhrenKilde Hansen told journalists. She wouldnât give a new timetable for the legal proposal. She acknowledged that the French prime minister Dominique de Villepin had written to the Commission earlier this month, urging it to drop the plan but she insisted that the Commission will decide for itself when the proposal will be launched. The Commission has been planning to harmonize copyright levies across the E.U. since 2000. Since then the case for scrapping most levies has grown stronger. Digital rights management software, which allows copyright owners to track the copying of their works, has become commonplace. The Commissionâs climb down sparked an angry reaction from the companies and industry groups pushing for a change to the system. âEuropean industry is deeply disturbed by the European Commissionâs apparent about-face on the planned reform of copyright levies,â said Mark McGann, spokesman for the CLRA in a statement issued Wednesday. âWith this decision, it is clear to industry that the Commission has abandoned any serious efforts to establish transparency, efficiency and fairness in the way these levies are set, collected and distributed,â he added, warning that without the revamp of copyright levies, several large European companies now intend to file official complaints with the Commission that will likely result in a wave of infringement procedures against certain member states. âThe reform of copyright levies would then move from the European executive to the European Court of Justice,â CLRA said in its statement.
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The reappearance of dictatorship-era documents relating to the treatment of political prisoners &#151; papers that a top government official said were destroyed decades ago &#151; has resurrected an issue many Brazilians would prefer to forget.
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Germany, the largest eurozone economy, lowered its 2008 growth forecast Thursday to 2.0 percent from 2.4 percent and its economy minister warned that fallout from a banking crisis could do more damage still.
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One can't allow in Europe that some countries say 'we're sufficiently rich to lower our taxes' -- to as low as zero in some cases -- but at the same time ask the countries of old Europe to pay structural funds ...
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The government of Estonia has rejected an application from a Gazprom-backed pipeline project to survey the seabed off its coast. The decision is likely to delay plans to pipe Russian gas directly to Germany.  Estonia's Prime Minister Andrus Ansip cited "national issues" as the reason.
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BRUSSELS The European Commission froze disciplinary action against France and Germany on Tuesday, granting the two biggest euro-zone economies an extra year to bring their budget deficits down.
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It's time to stop a hidden fund fee.
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Fees levied on airlines to cover air traffic control costs in Germany will drop sharply in the new year amid a recovery in air travel, a government official said Sunday.