Berlin  - German Chancellor Angela Merkel called business and labour leaders to Berlin Wednesday for an economic crisis summit amid a warning that the country could face social unrest if further steps are not taken to tackle the slump in Europe's biggest economy.

The meeting is the latest sign that the global recession is moving to centre stage in the campaign for German elections in September, with Merkel attempting to sharpen her crisis management credentials by also taking a leading role in shaping international moves to address the crisis.

Berlin  - Germany's leading mobile phone operator ruled out Wednesday paying compensation after an embarrassing outage in its network left millions of customers without a service.

T-Mobile has launched an investigation into the computer failure that brought mobile telephone services, including SMS messaging, to a halt for about 3 hours on Tuesday.

The Bonn-based offshoot of the giant German telecoms group Deutsche Telekom AG is also attempting to assess how many of its 40 million German mobile phone customers were hit by the outage.

Berlin - Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen AG unveiled plans Wednesday to build a new compact family vehicle in Slovakia.

German-based Volkswagen will invest about 308 million euros (400 million dollars) in building the new model, currently known by its project name, "up".

VW currently builds its Touareg, Skoda Octavia as well as its Audi Q7 in the Slovakian capital Bratislava and employs about 7,800 people in the nation, which has emerged a major hub in the global car industry. Porsche also builds its Cayenne model in Bratislava.

Berlin - The German government approved a law Wednesday blocking access to child pornography on the internet.

If the law now gets parliamentary approval, German federal police will compile daily surveys of child pornography on the internet and pass them on to internet providers
-who will then block access to the sites.

The move brings Germany into line with similar initiatives in Britain, Italy and Scandinavia.

München  - Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich are set to hire Brazilian right back Rafinha from Schalke 04, the Sport Bild weekly said in the run-up to the teams' league match.

Citing Schalke management sources, Sport Bild reported in its latest issue published on Wednesday that Rafinha has agreed terms to terms with Munich.

However, a transfer fee is yet to be determined as Rafinha has a contract at Schalke until 2011. It is also unclear whether Schalke will let him go.

Braunschweig, Germany - US seed manufacturing giant Monsanto took legal action Wednesday against the German government's ban on the company's genetically modified maize.

The lawsuit, filed at the administrative court in the city of Braunschweig, would need to be resolved by mid-May to give farmers time to plant their crop this year.