BERLIN, Feb 7 (Reuters) – The public has no tolerance for a state that does not do everything it can to fight tax evasion, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday.

Defending his decision to buy Swiss bank account data from a whistleblower even though they were stolen, he said social upheaval from globalization and the financial crisis has created an atmosphere where the public demands fair tax collection.

“In view of growing social tensions caused by globalization, the financial market crisis and the ludicrous bonus payments on the one hand along with growing unemployment on the other, it would be completely unbearable if the state didn’t do everything possible to ensure taxes were collected fairly,” Schaeuble said.

In the interview with ZDF television, Schaeuble said the roots of the problem of tax evasion have to be resolved through increased international cooperation.

BERLIN, Feb 6 (Reuters) – German officials hunting tax evaders are negotiating to buy Swiss bank account data from a whistleblower in France, a magazine reported on Saturday, after Berlin declared that banking secrecy was finished.

Munich-based Focus magazine said tax authorities would acquire this weekend data on 1,500 German clients of a Swiss bank, in an campaign which Switzerland’s president said on Saturday risked encouraging a market for stolen goods.

Quoting sources close to the investigation, Focus said the unnamed whistleblower had demanded a secret meeting in a neighbouring country as he feared he would be arrested in Germany and the data confiscated as illegally-obtained material.

The four officials were from the tax office in Wuppertal in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia state which is leading the current evasion investigation. A spokeswoman for the finance ministry declined comment on the report in the newsweekly.

POTSDAM, Germany (Reuters) – The Babelsberg film studio was bursting with pride Wednesday after American director Quentin Tarantino’s anti-Nazi farce “Inglourious Basterds” filmed here last year got eight Oscar nominations.

Carl Woebcken, CEO of the world’s oldest large-scale studio complex, said the record haul should give the 98-year-old film site an important shot in the arm as an international production center and help erase memories of some difficult decades.

“We’re all ecstatic,” Woebcken told a group of foreign journalists after a tour of the historic studio just south of Berlin. “That a film made in Babelsberg got so many Oscar nominations is something noticed around the world.”

Tarantino’s $70 million film, a violent and darkly comic revenge fantasy, got eight nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, including best director for Tarantino and best supporting actor for Christoph Waltz.

POTSDAM, Germany, Feb 3 (Reuters) – The Babelsberg film studio was bursting with pride on Wednesday after American director Quentin Tarantino’s anti-Nazi farce “Inglourious Basterds” filmed here last year got eight Oscar nominations.

Carl Woebcken, CEO of the world’s oldest large-scale studio complex, said the record haul should give the 98-year-old film site an important shot in the arm as an international production centre and help erase memories of some difficult decades.

“We’re all ecstatic,” Woebcken told a group of foreign journalists after a tour of the historic studio just south of Berlin. “That a film made in Babelsberg got so many Oscar nominations is something noticed around the world.”

Tarantino’s $70 million film, a violent and darkly comic revenge fantasy, got eight nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, including best director for Tarantino and best supporting actor for Christoph Waltz.

Germany has signalled it is ready to pay a thief who stole secret bank data in Switzerland in order to collect a small fortune in taxes and fines for tax evasion. According to media reports, the data may relate to money held by 1,500 Germans dodging taxes by hiding their money in Swiss bank accounts. But is it right for a state based on the rule of law to pay for stolen data? Is it a question of the ends justifying the means (exitus acta probat)? Or is it simply a modern form of bank robbery, like a Swiss lawmaker called it so colorfully on Tuesday?

It’s a question that has caused a stir on both sides of the German-Swiss border. Do two wrongs make a right? Can stolen data be used as evidence in court? Or is acceptable for a state to reward a thief in the pursuit of the greater good of fighting tax evasion — seen as a more serious crime?

Germans understandably have a deep suspicion about invasion of privacy after their ominous past experience with the Nazi’s Gestapo and the East German Stasi security police.  And Switzerland has historical hang ups about about Germany. There have been spirited debates on the moral pros and cons of the latest immoral offer for days.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble have said they’re in principle willing to pay an informant a reported 2.5 million euros for the bank data from Switzerland that could lead to more than 100 million euros for state coffers. The issue has has dominated newspaper headlines and TV bulletins in both countries for days.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Roman Polanski, under house arrest in Switzerland, will not come to the Berlin Film Festival next month even though the director’s latest film will be featured, Berlinale head Dieter Kosslick said Friday.

Kosslick said he had talked on the phone with Polanski, who is fighting extradition to face U.S. sentencing over a 1977 case of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. There had been some hopes Polanski would come to present “The Ghost Writer.”

“He won’t be coming,” Kosslick told a group of foreign journalists. By tradition films are presented at their first nights by their directors. “And there won’t be any videotaped message. “He thanked me on the phone for picking his film.

“I told him we picked it because it’s a great film. He’s been to the Berlinale often and said he loves the atmosphere here. The film is a political statement. But picking it was not a political statement but rather an artistic statement.”

BERLIN, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Germany’s opposition Social Democrats (SPD) accused Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday of dithering over whether she will accede to U.S. President Barack Obama’s request for more troops in Afghanistan. The SPD, who were in government when Germany sent soldiers to Afghanistan eight years ago, now oppose boosting the number of combat troops from nearly 4,500 and insist Merkel should set out a timetable for them coming home. Conservative Merkel is due to make a statement to parliament on her Afghanistan strategy on Wednesday, ahead of an international conference about Afghanistan in London on Jan. 28, but it is unclear how much detail she will give on troop numbers. SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel said Germany would be stuck on the sidelines at next week’s conference, which Britain says may set a timetable for transferring responsibility for some areas to Afghan control. "Anyone heading to London without a strategy is going to end up on the sidelines," Gabriel said at a public conference on Friday on whether the SPD should support any proposal to raise the number of troops in Afghanistan. "It’s completely unacceptable that the government can’t come up with a coherent Afghanistan strategy. One moment the defence minister calls for more combat troops but then the foreign minister says he won’t go to London if it’s about combat troops. "This has been going on for weeks," he added. "And the chancellor stays silent the whole time." Other German opposition parties, some media commentators, and even a few members of her own party, have made broader accusations against Merkel of failing to give direction on a number of policy fronts, from tax policy to Afghanistan and health reform. CONSENSUS POLITICS Merkel needs parliamentary approval to boost the current mandate of troops, which constitutes the third largest contingent in NATO’s Afghanistan mission behind the United States and Britain. Although SPD backing for any increase is not formally needed, Merkel is keen to have the party’s support as Germany has a tradition of securing as much cross-party consensus as possible on its military missions abroad. Opinion polls show a majority of Germans oppose the deployment and want their soldiers to come home. Gabriel also called for an exit timetable. He said it was time to set a "corridor of 2013 to 2015" for leaving. German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on Friday said troop levels may be raised above 4,500, without giving a firm commitment. "It can’t be ruled out that we’ll stay at this limit or that we’ll go beyond it. It just has to make sense," Guttenberg told ARD television. It was a former SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, who originally sent troops to Afghanistan and the SPD was a partner in Merkel’s coalition from 2005 to 2009 when Berlin repeatedly extended the mandate in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s outgoing Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, speaking in Germany to the 900 attending the conference, urged NATO not to leave too soon. He said Afghanistan would be able to take over responsibility for its defence in five years if there is a reinforcement of support now. (Additional reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Matthew Jones)

BERLIN (Reuters) – German police said on Thursday they were searching for a middle-aged man in a business suit who walked away from a security check at Munich international airport after his laptop computer set off an explosives alarm.

Police said the man, who retrieved his laptop and left quickly before it could be re-examined, may have been oblivious that security wanted another look and could have boarded a flight just moments before the airport was shut down.

“We’re searching for the man but I’d like to stress he is not wanted for any criminal matter,” said Albert Poerschke, police spokesman at Franz Josef Strauss Airport. Some 100 flights were delayed and 33 scrapped in Wednesday’s three-hour shutdown.

“It was evidently a businessman who wanted to catch his plane,” he added. “The man probably didn’t even realize that he was being requested to stay for another laptop examination.”

BERLIN (Reuters) – The German government is working on plans to speed up cuts in solar feed-in tariffs (FIT) beyond the annual 10 percent drop that took effect January 1. Here are some questions about looming changes in the world’s top solar market:

WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT WANT TO CUT THE FIT AGAIN?

The new center-right government wants to cut the FIT further in 2010 as overall price declines outpaced the annual FIT cut of 8-10 percent in recent years due to strong demand. The coalition’s pro-business wing called for a 30 percent cut.

WHAT’S THE STATUS NOW?

BERLIN (Reuters) – The government, photovoltaic companies and consumer lobby groups moved closer on Wednesday toward an agreement on trimming state-mandated incentives for solar power to reflect a steeper overall slide in costs.

Although no decision was reached at the meeting, officials at the two rounds of hearings at the Environment Ministry in Berlin said they expected a decision on moderate reductions in the feed-in tariffs to be made soon.

“There’s an agreement that the level of the support has to more closely track the speed of the expansion of photovoltaic power,” said Holger Krawinkel, an energy expert for the federal consumer protection agency lobby who was at the talks.

“There are still divergent views on the concrete numbers. The Environment Ministry will evidently put forth a proposal early next week.”