Berlin  - German carmakers Opel and BMW said Tuesday they were calling a temporary halt to production, following a fall-off in demand triggered by the global credit squeeze.

Opel announced it was halting production in nearly all its European plants for periods of up to three weeks from October 13.

Luxury carmaker BMW said production at its Leipzig plant in the eastern part of Germany would stop for four days in the last week of October, affecting 2,800 vehicles.

Berlin - Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet approved Tuesday a 14-month extension of German troop deployment in Afghanistan.

Germany currently has 3,500 soldiers serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), but the number is expected to increase to 4,500 under a bill due to go before parliament later in the day.

A vote is not due until mid-October, but the measure is expected easily to pass in the legislature, where Merkel's broad-based coalition enjoys a secure majority.

Berlin  - Chancellor Angela Merkel's promise that personal savings at German banks are safe is a political assurance, her spokesman said in Berlin Monday, implying a statutory insurance of deposits was not planned.

"It's a political statement that can be relied on and is decisive," said Ulrich Wilhelm. The German government and its capabilities stood behind this assurance, he added.

Merkel herself, in a speech in the central city of Wiesbaden, said "the state's guarantee" had been necessary to restore confidence.

Berlin - Harald zur Hausen, a German virologist who shared the Nobel pri

Berlin  - Legislators in the north-eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Monday elected Erwin Sellering as the state's new premier.

Sellering, previously minister for justice and social affairs, replaced Harald Ringstorff, who announced in August that he was stepping down at the age of 68 after 10 years in office.

Sellering, 58, like Ringstorff a member of the left-of centre Social Democratic Party (SPD), received 40 votes from the 69 deputies present in the state parliament in Schwerin.

The new premier is considered an outgoing team player, unlike his predecessor who was often regarded as self-willed and stubborn.