Europe, Germany | featured news

Best known for its budget flat-pack furniture, Scandinavian retailer Ikea is planning to launch a chain of budget hotels in Europe. The property division of Inter Ikea - the company that owns the Ikea intellectual property rights - is planning hotels in 100 locations across Europe. The first two hotels are expected to open in Germany in 2014. Other locations earmarked for hotels include Belgium, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Britain and Poland.

The euro zone's two largest economies avoided shrinking between April and June, but the resilience of Germany and France wasn't enough to prevent the currency bloc's economy as a whole from falling back into contraction.

Spain has for the first time conceded it might need a full EU/IMF bailout worth 300 billion euros ($366 billion) if its borrowing costs remain unsustainably high, a euro zone official said.

German leaders have a message for their anxious neighbors: Perhaps the euro crisis isn’t so dire after all. A growing chorus of German policymakers say they have years to resolve the euro zone’s problems, even as Italy and Spain press for urgent action to bring down their borrowing costs, which are approaching new heights.

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender, is to cut 1,000 jobs in its investment banking division, the business daily Handelsblatt reported Thursday, quoting "well-informed financial sources".

Greece's new government should stop asking for more help and instead move quickly to enact reform measures agreed to in return for previous bailouts from its European partners, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday.

Germany may be Europe’s most powerful economy. But its prosperity is so uneven that Poles just across the border see it differently: as a place where housing is a bargain... The uneasiness here helps to explain the unwillingness voiced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel about proposals that would require her country to dip further into its treasury to help address the rest of Europe’s economic problems.

Euro zone paymaster Germany, relieved at a narrow election victory for Greece's pro-bailout parties, signaled on Monday it may be willing to grant Athens more time to meet its fiscal targets to avert a catastrophic euro exit.

A collapse of the euro could derail America’s fragile recovery and doom Mr. Obama’s re-election hopes. He may be running out of time to sway the German chancellor.

A Canadian porn actor suspected of murdering and dismembering a Chinese student and mailing his body parts to Canada's top political parties was reading about himself on the Internet when he was arrested Monday at a cafe in Berlin.