Hamburg  - "All you need is..." patience and money. 28 years after the then completely unknown Beatles played their first gig in Hamburg, and seven years after the idea was born of honouring the band with a memorial square, the legendary mop tops are back in the city.

The Beatles laid the foundation stone of their career in the early 1960s in the Hamburg neighbourhood of St Pauli. It is there where five stainless steel sculptures now depict the musicians, doing what they did best.

Hamburg - People in Europe and North America are ignorant of China's enormous historical achievements, former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt said Thursday.

Addressing the Hamburg Summit, a meeting of business leaders from China and Germany, the elder statesman said China had made vast economic progress over the past 30 years.

He and other speakers called on European nations to intensify dialogue with China and improve relations, despite criticism in the West of China's human-rights policies, especially its controversial crackdown on protesters in Tibet this year.

France's minister of foreign trade, Anne-Marie Idrac, said the European Union was determined to step up investment in China as much as possible.

Hamburg  - Troubled German solar-energy company Conergy said Thursday it was in talks over the future of its solar-cell plant at Frankfurt an der Oder, east of Berlin.

Conergy is one of a raft of German makers of renewable-energy equipment that grew rapidly, fostered by government legislation aimed at cutting carbon emissions.

Responding to a report by the Seoul newspaper Maeil Business Newspaper that it was in talks on selling the site to South Korean electrical group LG, Conergy said, "We are in talks about a strategic partnership in Frankfurt an der Oder."

Hamburg  - A Chinese vice-premier, Zhang Dejiang, was visiting Germany Wednesday, the first high-level visit since China's controversial crackdown in Tibet this year.

Zhang had talks in the port city of Hamburg with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Both also toured the Airbus factory in the city where giant airliners are wired up and painted and attended the start of a two- day business meeting dubbed the Hamburg Summit which is held every two years.

Hamburg - BMW plans to include in its range by 2015 a "megacity" car more suited to crowded urban streets than to the open road, the German company's chief executive, Norbert Reithofer, said in an

Hamburg - Birds recognise their own reflection in the mirror as being themselves and not that of another bird, according to German researchers.

The recognition of "self" has been known to exist among primates such as chimpanzees and orang-utans.

There have also been reports that dolphins and elephants share the same ability.

All these animals live in a complex social world, as do humans, which experts believe may be linked to self-recognition.