Europe, Germany | featured news

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought Tuesday to calm market fears that Greece is heading for a chaotic default as Europe struggles to contain a crippling financial crisis. Merkel rejected the notion that a Greek bankruptcy — a possibility raised a day earlier by her deputy that spooked markets — would provide a quick solution to the eurozone debt crisis.

After a series of positive announcement from Greek FinMin Venizelos, rumors that Moody's would downgrade French banks and Germany was preparing for a Greece to default send equities tanking, particularly French banks.

Apple Inc., the world’s most valuable technology company, won backing from a German court for a ban on sales of Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer in the country. A Dusseldorf court today upheld the temporary sales ban it issued Aug. 9, rejecting Samsung’s bid to overturn it for the most part. The judges won’t ban sales in other European Union countries as Apple had sought, Presiding Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann said when delivering the verdict.

With its gas business in decline, Russia on Tuesday begin filling a new pipeline that goes directly under the Baltic Sea to Germany, bypassing Ukraine, Belarus and Poland.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats have suffered a loss in elections in her home state, exit polls suggest.

The naked sunbathers who once crowded Germany's Baltic beaches and city parks are becoming an endangered species due to shifting demographics, the fall of the Berlin Wall, growing prosperity and widening girths.

An outspoken Chinese writer and government critic has left his homeland for Germany after police repeatedly threatened him with imprisonment to prevent him from publishing any more of his controversial works overseas. Liao Yiwu arrived in Berlin two days ago at the end of a secretive journey that included transfers in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and Warsaw, Poland, the writer said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

European health officials have cautiously identified contaminated fenugreek seeds as a probable common link between the large outbreak in Germany and a smaller one in France.

The number of people falling sick as a result of E. coli contamination has slowed to a trickle, Germany's national disease control center said Tuesday, even as the death toll from the outbreak rose by one Tuesday to 37....

An official says the tainted sprouts may have been eaten or thrown away by now, but people should still not eat sprouts. However, the warning against cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce is lifted. The outbreak killed 29.