Frankfurt, Germany - Thais celebrate New Year in April with the Songkran Festival, which starts as a major spring cleaning before regularly escalating into good-natured
water fights.

The festival is traditionally marked by cleaning one's house, Thailand's tourism authority said in Frankfurt. At the same time, the superiors of Buddhist monasteries bathe
the Buddha images in the temples. Over the years, these ritual washings came to include Thais dousing each other with water.

A German orchestra which is to perform at the Vatican Wednesday believes it is the first ever conducted by a woman to perform for a pope.

Frankfurt, Germany  - Business travellers should expect to dig deeper into their pockets for airline tickets and hotels next year, according to a survey by American Express.

The study indicates that overall prices are not expected to increase vastly. However, the cost of flying is likely to rise by up to 7 per cent and that of hotel rooms by up to 6 per cent.

The price hike is likely to affect German business travellers even more with flights out of the country to rise by 9 per cent.

US cruise company Royal Caribbean is to inaugurate a new route to Dubai starting in January 2010 when the "Brilliance of the Seas" heads to destinations in the Persian Gulf.

Two key German banks announced Monday they were tapping the government's 470-billion-bank-euro (600-billion-dollar) rescue fund in the wake of the world financial crisis.

German Bundesliga clubs Bayer Leverkusen and Cologne were both fined by the German Football Federation (DFB) Monday after flares and firecrackers landed on the pitch in the recent derby match between the sides.

Shares in Commerzbank AG bounded ahead Monday after Germany's second biggest bank said it was tapping the government's bank rescue fund for an 8.2 billion-euros (10.6 billion dollars) capital injectio

Luxury carmaker Porsche released some of the price pressure on Volkswagen stock Wednesday, announcing in Stuttgart it would unwind futures contracts on up to 5 per cent of Volkswagen AG voting stock.

At the same time it affirmed its ultimate intention to buy "up to 75 per cent" of Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker.