Vienna/Linz, Austria  - Some European Capitals of Culture are luckier than others. While this year Liverpool banked on the Beatles, the Austrian town of Linz has to grapple with its connection to Adolf Hitler in 2009.

But besides using the opportunity to deal with the fact that Hitler planned to make Linz a major cultural centre of the Third Reich, the steel town along the Danube river will offer a host of quirky cultural projects geared towards a wide public rather than a select few.

Linz, Austria - German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Saturday for greater transparency in financial markets, following the global upheavals caused by the US credit crunch.

Merkel said it was unfair that the losses arising from the crisis have been "shed fairly equally around the world."

Europe needed to do more for greater transparency and to ensure that such a scenario does not repeat itself, she told a rally of the conservative Austrian political party OeVP.

Merkel said greater trans-Athaltic cooperation was needed in the financial sector.