Germany

Gloom permeates the U.S. auto industry, but happier days are here again for workers at the Skoda factory in the western Czech Republic. Orders are up, their assembly lines are humming once more, and they owe it all to the government. Just not their own. Their gratitude goes instead to their next-door neighbor.

Art history is a messy business. And the urge to clean it up is irresistible, especially in the period of the Cold War in Germany. No surprise, then, that the most common shorthand for art produced in the divided nation goes something like this: East German artists made retrograde figurative work in the service of a repressive government; West Germans produced progressive abstractions under the freedom of democracy.

Germany and beer go together like Porsches and the autobahn, but health-conscious residents are turning from the country's traditional beverage in favor of juices and bottled water, sending suds sales down to the lowest levels in 15 years. According to a government report released last Tuesday, the amount of beer sold in Germany fell to the lowest point since 1993 -- dropping 2.7% last year to 22 billion pints.

Investigators have traced more than $296 million in German assets to secretive foundations in Liechtenstein in a widening, worldwide tax-evasion investigation in which 163 Germans have admitted guilt, prosecutors said Tuesday. Separately, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service announced that it was initiating enforcement action against 100 American taxpayers in connection with Liechtenstein accounts.

He didn't break into German, but he spoke of tearing down walls of division, and the crowd loved it. Tens of thousands of Germans, along with some resident Americans, filled Berlin's Tiergarten park to hear Barack Obama talk about the U.S., Europe and their shared visions and challenges. It was a remarkable turnout for the lazy days of late July, when most Germans are more focused on summer vacations than foreign politics.

U.S. military authorities told advisors to Barack Obama this week that he could not bring press or campaign staff on a visit to wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan at a hospital in Germany, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday. After advisors learned of the restriction, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee canceled his scheduled visit Friday to the military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in southern Germany.

BERLIN -- A new film devoted to the violent career of the Red Army Faction has drawn sharp criticism from both the daughter of one of the left-wing German terrorist group's leaders and the daughter of a prominent victim. "The Baader Meinhof Complex," directed by Uli Edel and produced by Bernd Eichinger, was released in Germany on Sept. 25 and already has been chosen as the country's contender for a foreign-language Oscar nomination.

Sometimes serendipity makes history. In this case, it may have uncovered history. This year, Israeli writer Yaron Svoray came to Germany to research the underground operation that whisked Nazi officials to South America to escape justice after World War II. Svoray was chatting with a local about his project when the man mentioned that a nearby plot of land had served as a dump during the Third Reich.

German industrial giant Siemens agreed Monday to pay a record $800 million to settle U.S. criminal charges stemming from what federal authorities say was a systemic campaign of bribing foreign officials for lucrative contracts. The Munich company also agreed to pay about $540 million to settle similar charges in Germany, which started the investigation in 2006. Both U.S.

So how did Suri deal with the eye patch? That would be Suri Cruise and her dad, Tom, who famously wears a black pirate-esque patch in his new film, "Valkyrie," a World War II thriller about a plot to assassinate Hitler that opened on Christmas. Cruise plays the coup's real life ringleader, the aristocratic Col. Claus von Stauffenberg.