Berlin  - German investor confidence reported its sixth consecutive monthly rise in April, a key indicator to be released Tuesday is forecast to show, amid hopes for Europe's biggest economy and more positive news out of the crisis-hit world financial sector.

Analysts predict the Mannheim-based Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) will say its index measuring the mood among analysts and institutional investors edged up to 2 points this month compared to minus 3.5 points in March.

Berlin  - The suburban German S-Bahn train rumbles towards Berlin's Bundesplatz station, offering passengers a glimpse of a nearby art foundry, its yard littered with abandoned metal sculptures and moulds.

In the adjacent workshop sparks fly from furnaces where workers wear protective clothing and pour molten metal into casts. Sculptors from around the world occasionally arrive at the premises, eager to try out their ideas and realise them together with the bronze moulders.

Hanover, Germany  - A plug and socket which companies hope will become standard throughout Europe to recharge battery-powered cars was unveiled Monday at the Hanover Fair in Germany.

The plug shown to reporters by German electricity company RWE is blue, about as big as a fist and has seven pins. The 400-volt connector is intended to replace the current wide variety of household plugs used to recharge electric cars.

The Hanover Fair does not normally include any automotive products.

Dortmund, Germany - Paragua

Hanover, Germany - Subcontractors and parts suppliers in Germany warned Monday that they might have to shed as many as 100,000 of their collective workforce if the recession persists.

The sector, which supplies parts to bigger industry, currently employs about 1 million people.

Theodor L. Tutmann, spokesman for the Supplier Working Party, representing 8,000 companies, said at the Hanover Fair, a major industry expo which began in Germany Monday, that the scale of layoffs depended on how long the recession continued.

Hamburg - The Toyota and BMW-Sauber Formula One teams are looking to challenge at the front of the grid in this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir after mixed starts to a so far unpredictable 2009 season.

Both teams will be hoping to leave the rain in Malaysia and China behind them and instead take on the challenge of heat and dust in the Arab Emirate.