Berlin - Kinga Goncz, foreign minister of Hungary which was rescued last month by international lenders from financial collapse, called in Berlin Friday for better European Union coordination in crises.

He spoke after meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Both said they favoured joint EU strategies to deal with financial and economic crises.

"I'm firmly convinced this will work," said Steinmeier.

"Europe can only be strong if we work together and coordinate our actions with one another," said Goncz.

Berlin - The authoritarian ruler of Turkmenistan met Friday in Berlin with Chancellor Angela Merkel amid keen Western interest in the former Soviet republic's rich oil and gas deposits.

"Cooperation between our two countries is far from complete," Merkel said after her meeting with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, 51, who took over two years ago after the death of dictator Saparmurad Niyasov.

The one-party state has been criticized by exiled dissidents and human-rights watchdogs.

Berlin - German experts compiling a brief for the G20 summit in Washington proposed in Berlin Friday that a worldwide register of loans be set up so that governments can see at a glance where debtors might default.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she anticipated that the Group of 20 leaders would on Saturday issue "work instructions for the next 100 days" to experts. Those experts would then report back on world economic reforms at a later summit.

Merkel is to argue in Washington for a set of reforms drafted over the past two weeks by a panel of leading German economists.

Munich - The alleged kingpin of the main Russian organized-crime family in Germany's Bavaria state went on trial Friday.

Lawyers for the alleged mobsters showered the court with motions to stop the trial. Security at the Munich courthouse was strict.

The defendant, 39, was indicted with running a criminal organization.

Two alleged mafia lieutenants, aged 31 and 30, are accused of being members of the crime syndicate, which allegedly ran protection rackets, trafficked drugs and spread counterfeit money in the prosperous state starting in 2001.

Berlin - Grandparents in Germany won the right to unpaid leave from work to care fo

Berlin - German experts compiling a brief for the G20 summit in Washington are to call for a revision of the way banking executives are paid and a worldwide loan registry, sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Friday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck commissioned the experts to rapidly draft a set of proposals and report back Friday.

Led by Otmar Issing, a former chief economist of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, they said short-term performance bonuses for financial executives had been a significant cause of the global financial crisis.