BERLIN, Dec 19 (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel
gave her full backing to German President Christian Wulff on
Monday, after fresh revelations about his links to wealthy
businessmen emerged over the weekend.

Wulff acknowledged on Sunday that he had used the villas of
business friends for private holidays on six occasions while he
was premier of Lower Saxony, following an earlier admission he
accepted a half-million euro home loan from a businessman.

BERLIN, Dec 14 (Reuters) – A senior leader of
Germany’s Free Democrats resigned unexpectedly on Wednesday in
the latest sign of turmoil in the party that shares power with
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

Christian Lindner, general secretary of the beleaguered FDP
and a rising star who many wanted to see take over as chairman,
stepped down in a move which appeared to be linked to the poor
turnout in a party referendum on euro zone rescue moves.

By Noah Barkin and Erik Kirschbaum

(Reuters) – It was approaching midnight at a yacht club on the French Riviera, down the road from a G20 summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was telling reporters about her decision to block a loan to Greece, when suddenly her finance minister interrupted to set the record straight.

Wolfgang Schaeuble told the journalists that it had been his idea to stop the flow of aid to Athens. That move had helped convince Athens to drop its controversial plans for a referendum on new austerity steps, calming financial markets. Schaeuble had personally delivered the news in a phone call to his Greek counterpart Evangelos Venizelos, in hospital at the time with stomach pains.

BERLIN, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel on
Wednesday took the wraps off a three-bedroom house that will
produce twice as much energy as it needs, a project she said
will serve as a showcase for renewable energy and climate
protection.

The passive-energy house, built in front of a federal
building near a Berlin rail station, will produce more than
16,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year with photovoltaic
panels on its roof and south-facing wall.

BERLIN, Dec 6 (Reuters) – Germany’s opposition Social
Democrats (SPD) agreed on Tuesday to make a demand for higher
taxes on the rich a cornerstone of their programme for the 2013
election.

The centre-left SPD made no progress, however, in picking a
candidate to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in the election
due in late 2013. A trio of former ministers under Merkel in the
previous grand coalition government are in the running.

BERLIN, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Germans in a southwestern
state voted on Sunday in favour of building a 4.5-billion euro
train station in Stuttgart, ending a controversy over the giant
project that helped to push Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party out
of power in the state.

Voters in Baden-Wuerttemberg backed by a 59-41 percent
margin the “Stuttgart 21″ station that will be part of a
high-speed rail network linking southern Germany, France and
Austria. About 48 percent of eligible state voters took part in
the referendum, a rarity in Germany.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Vice Chancellor Philipp Roesler on Saturday called a proposal by the European Commission last week for joint debt issuance “irresponsible” and said Berlin will remain firm in its rejection of euro zone bonds.

Roesler, also Economy Minister, said in a radio interview that European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso made a mistake last week by suggesting euro zone bonds could be issued once new, intrusive laws to ensure budgets of euro zone countries do not break EU rules are in place.

BERLIN, Nov 24 (Reuters) – A disgraced former German
defence minister with aspirations to succeed Chancellor Angela
Merkel hinted on Thursday he was ready to come back from a
self-imposed exile after prosecutors dropped a plagiarism
investigation.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, 39, was once the German
conservatives’ brightest star but quit abruptly in March after
admitting to copying parts of his doctoral dissertation. He
dropped out of sight and moved to the United States.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A wave of neo-Nazi killings of immigrant shopkeepers threatens to tarnish Germany’s image around the world and is an assault against its democratic foundations, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.

In a forceful speech to parliament, Merkel said police had made many mistakes in failing to stop or even detect the band of neo-Nazis who shot nine immigrants and a German police woman at close range during a mysterious murder spree from 2000 to 2007.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The German parliament, in a rare sign of cross-party unity, condemned on Tuesday a wave of neo-Nazi killings and the failure of police agencies to stop the murder spree in which nine immigrant shopkeepers were shot dead at close range.

All members of parliament from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition to the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Left party rose in unison to voice contrition for Germany’s failure to protect the immigrants from right-wing extremists.