Berlin - Germany's government is expected to decide Wednesday to spend an extra 15 billion euros (19 billion dollars) to help ward off the worst effects of a recession, according to a cabinet paper obtained by reporters in Berlin.

The government believes the two-year programme will generate 50 billion euros in investment and consumption by Germans, the documents seen in advance by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa showed Tuesday.

Berlin  - Germany's economy will pick up in 2010 after a rough patch next year, Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted on Tuesday as she spoke to an audience of German business leaders.

"We'll face bad news in 2009, but we are going to do something so that 2010 will be better," said Merkel, who faces a general election next September. Merkel's cabinet was set to approve on Wednesday an anti-recession federal spending package.

She told the national employers' association she expected Germany's export-led economic growth to ultimately recover.

Berlin - Tens of thousands of workers in Germany's engineering sector walked off their jobs Monday as their union expanded rolling strikes to press its demands for an 8-per-cent pay raise.

The one-day strikes, which began Saturday, are to continue at different factories each day till Friday. The IG Metall union has rejected an offer of 2.1-per-cent more income in 2009 plus a one-off bonus of 1.6 per cent.

The union called it a "provocation" that the 3.6 million employees in the metal-products and electrical industry had not been offered raises to compensate for inflation.

Berlin - Most video games are so labyrinthine that, to the casual player, the games provide seemingly infinite room to explore. But truly dedicated gamers eventually reach a game's limits. While that once meant moving onto the next game, for many games that's no longer necessary.

"Create your own game" is the latest motto among game designers as brand-new games like Little Big Planet and other current titles are turning video gamers themselves into video game developers.

Christoph Adrian has been a gamer from the industry's infancy. In the 1980s, he was putting the joystick through its paces on the Commodore C64 - and even then, just playing wasn't enough.

Berlin - When Germans debate how to avoid a devastating financial crash, they are haunted as few other nations can be by memories of most of their money practically vanishing during the 20th century.

The people of Europe's biggest economy are "risk averse" as a result, according to Manfred Schmidt, a political science professor at the University of Heidelberg who has written extensively on German anxiety.

In 1923, the Great Inflation wiped out Germans' money for the first time. In 1948, most savings vanished at the stroke of a pen when the old currency was demonetized. In
1990, it was the turn of East Germans to lose half the value of larger savings.

Berlin  - Germany plans to contest an Italian court ruling in order to head off new claims for damages arising from Nazi atrocities during World War II, officials said Saturday.

"The government intends to obtain a clarification on the issue from the International Court of Justice," a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said in Berlin.