Trieste, Italy - Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday joined his Italian counterpart Franco Frattini in laying a commemorative wreath for the victims of a former World War II Nazi death camp near the north-eastern Italian port of Trieste.

Steinmeier was in Trieste Tuesday as part of a summit including talks between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Berlin - There's a saying in Germany that when Daimler coughs, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg catches pneumonia.

Things are not yet quite as bad as that in the home of Mercedes- Benz, or in Germany in general. But strong medicine is needed to get Germany's ailing car industry back on its feet amid a slump in profits and sales.

The first dose was requested by Opel, once the nation's biggest carmaker, which has been brought to its knees by the massive losses suffered by its US parent General Motors (GM).

Hamelin, Germany  - The rats are back in Hamelin, where a legendary Pied Piper once rid the Germany city of both rodents and children.

The city confirmed Tuesday it was battling a rat population explosion in an area of overgrown former garden allotments close to the city centre.

"It's like a rubbish dump in there and has developed into a rat refuge," said municipal spokesman Thomas Wahmes. After a rapid rise in rat numbers this year, the vermin were spreading into a new housing estate nearby.

Trieste, Italy - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi began hosting German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a day of talks Tuesday, with the current global economic crisis expected to feature high on the agenda.

The discussions, taking place in the north eastern Italian Adriatic Sea port of Trieste, were to be followed by a joint news conference scheduled for around 1430 GMT.

Traunstein, Germany - The collapse of a snow-covered indoor ice-skating rink in Germany, which killed 15 people two years ago, was the fault of the engineer who built the rink in 1973, a court ruled Tuesday.

The district court in Traunstein gave the 68-year-old a suspended, 18-month prison term for committing homicide by negligence.

Under the enormous weight of snow, roof beams snapped and the building collapsed on skaters on January 2, 2006 in the Alpine resort of Bad Reichenhall, in Germany's far south-east corner.

The court acquitted the architect of the building and another engineer who had inspected the building in 2003 without noticing that moisture was weakening the laminated-wood beams.