BERLIN/PARIS, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Talk of beefing up the
euro zone’s bailout fund lifted stocks on Tuesday but
complicated the debate in Germany where Angela Merkel is
struggling to rally her coalition behind her in aiding Europe’s
weak economies and banks.

European shares rallied for a second day and safe-haven
German bonds fell on reports that European policymakers were
preparing more decisive action to tackle the bloc’s sovereign
debt crisis by leveraging up the 440 billion euro rescue pot.

BERLIN, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Greece will meet its commitments
to international lenders, Prime Minister George Papandreou told
a German audience on Tuesday and also said Europe’s bailout fund
must be expanded.

Greece is under pressure to reform so it can receive further
aid and Papandreou will hold talks with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel on the euro zone debt crisis later in the day.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germans opposed to Pope Benedict’s teachings on sexuality and angry at cases of abuse by priests protested in Berlin on Thursday while members of parliament boycotted a speech by the pontiff at the start of his four-day visit to his homeland.

The pope met Chancellor Angela Merkel, leading politicans and Jewish figures and received warm applause during a speech to parliament in the Reichstag building, a rare honor.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A bomb threat by Kurdish protesters delayed a speech by Turkish President Abdullah Gul in Berlin on Monday, when German police evacuated the city’s central Humboldt University just as he was due to speak.

Gul eventually gave an abridged version of his speech two hours later, to a limited audience.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced confidence on Monday that her government would win a key vote in parliament on the ailing euro zone despite the drubbing of her coalition partner in a state election, the latest in a string of reverses at the ballot box.

Elections in the city state of Berlin on Sunday handed Merkel her sixth regional defeat of 2011 and saw the Free Democrats (FDP) ejected from the assembly for falling below the five percent threshold to a post-war low of 1.8 percent.

BERLIN, Sept 19 (Reuters) – Berlin’s centre-left Mayor Klaus
Wowereit said on Monday his re-election had given Germany’s
Social Democrats nationwide momentum to unseat the “unspeakable”
coalition of conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Social Democrats (SPD) won Sunday’s vote in the city
state of Berlin to hand Merkel her sixth regional election
defeat this year, ahead of a key vote in parliament on the
stricken euro zone in two weeks’ time.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s “Pirates,” a kooky band of campaigners for personal liberty, won 8.5 percent of votes in an election in Berlin on Sunday, humiliating major parties such as the Free Democrats, junior partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition.

The Pirates, formed in Sweden 2006, polled more than four times as many votes as the Free Democrats (FDP), according to initial election results, to take their first seats in a German state assembly.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey will never forget the nine Turks killed when Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, days before the submission of a U.N. report on the raid last year.

In a speech to a conference of foreign ambassadors to the Palestinian territories in Istanbul, Erdogan condemned the continuing blockade of Gaza as “illegal and inhuman” and said the Palestinians’ troubles were Turkey’s troubles and would not go neglected.

Jul (Reuters) – Just a century after Austria repelled Ottoman troops from the gates of Vienna a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, newly arrived in the city, wrote an opera about the feared former foe set in a Pasha’s harem.

Besides the requisite arias and comic duets Mozart also tried to include the piercing timbre of the Ottoman janissary bands, whose ear-splitting drums, cymbals and whining reeds had once accompanied the Sultans on their expansive sweep across south eastern Europe.

ISTANBUL, June 28 (Reuters) – Greece is embroiled in the
most complex sovereign debt problem for years as there are so
many parties involved and no unified European view, the head of
the Institute of International Finance (IIF) said on Tuesday.

“This is the most complex sovereign debt crisis I have ever
been connected with, because there are so many players, no
unified European view, and the weaknesses of the Greek economy
are extraordinarily serious,” said Charles Dallara, who has been
managing director of the IIF bank lobby group for 18 years and
was involved in other sovereign crises.