BERLIN, June 23 (Reuters) – Germany’s best-selling newspaper
was given away free to almost all of the country’s 41 million
households on Saturday in a controversial celebration of the
daily’s 60th anniversary that set a world record for largest
circulation.

Bild newspaper – a tabloid-style daily both feared and
respected for its massive influence in Germany but also known
for its hard-hitting campaigns and photos of nude women – sent
41 million copies to all but 200,000 postal addresses of people
who expressly requested not to receive Saturday’s newspaper.

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – The euro zone’s senior finance minister urged a rapid resolution of Spain’s debt crisis on Saturday before a meeting where he will lead discussions on a bailout of the country’s teetering banks.

Several senior EU sources told Reuters on Friday that Madrid was expected to ask the currency bloc for help with recapitalizing its banks this weekend, becoming the fourth country to seek assistance since Europe’s debt crisis began.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Rocker Bruce Springsteen touched on a nerve of widespread discontent with the financiers and bankers at a Berlin concert on Wednesday, railing against them as “greedy thieves” and “robber barons.”

Springsteen, a singer-songwriter dubbed “The Boss” who has long championed populist causes, played to a sold-out crowd at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, singing from his album “Wrecking Ball” and speaking about tough economic times that have put people out of work worldwide and led to debt crises in Greece and other countries.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A Nazi war criminal who escaped from a Dutch jail and lived as a fugitive in Germany for 60 years has died at the age of 90, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said on Monday.

Klaas Carel Faber, number two on the Center’s list of most wanted Nazi criminals, was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Netherlands for the killings of at least 11 people at a staging post for Dutch Jews being taken to concentration camps.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives saw their lead over the main centre-left opposition party crumble in the sharpest one-week shift in German voter sentiment in seven years, an opinion poll showed on Sunday.

An eight percentage point lead by Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) over the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) fell to just two points during a week that saw the chancellor face pressure over the euro crisis and domestic turmoil, according to the Emnid poll.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A top ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives appealed to the opposition Social Democrats and Greens on Sunday to refrain from “playing political games” and back the government to endorse Europe’s new fiscal pact and permanent bailout fund.

The SPD and their allies the Greens – making common cause with France’s new Socialist President Francois Hollande and some other EU leaders – say the pact must be accompanied by new measures to promote growth and investment in Europe.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour – equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity – through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.

The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.

BERLIN, May 26 (Reuters) – Germany will not “pour money into
a bottomless pit” and patience with Greece is growing thin ahead
of a new election in the Mediterranean country, a conservative
member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet was quoted on
Saturday as saying.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told the Leipziger
Volkszeitung newspaper that Germany, Europe’s largest economy
and the biggest contributor to rescue efforts, is glad to help
Greece help itself but expects it to honour its agreements.

BERLIN, May 20 (Reuters) – A record-breaking pay deal will
give millions of German workers their biggest rise in wages in
two decades, boost consumption in Europe’s biggest economy and
help towards adjusting the regional imbalances that have caused
severe tensions within the euro zone, analysts said on Sunday.

Germany’s largest industrial union IG Metall agreed to a
4.3-percent pay rise from employers just before dawn on
Saturday, giving the 3.6 million car and engineering industry
workers their biggest wage increase since a 5.4 percent deal in
1992.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked Greek President Karolos Papoulias what he thought of the idea of holding a referendum on Greek membership in the euro but did not push it, a journalist who said he overheard their conversation wrote on Saturday.

A Greek government spokesman said Merkel raised the idea in a telephone call on Friday but Berlin swiftly denied that.