Munich - A Catholic archbishop in Germany published a book Wednesday attacking capitalistic excesses.

Not only is the book called Das Kapital, but the author's name is Marx.

Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich is not related to 19th-century communist founding father Karl Marx, but the most reverend clergyman's surname draws wonderment and wisecracks wherever he goes.

The archbishop is also the most outspoken of Germany's 27 diocesan leaders in his criticism of big business.

Munich - The annual "Medientage Munich 2008" kicked off Wednesday in the Bavarian capital with the country's top media executives focusing on their rapidly changing industry and its impact on the entertainment industry and society.

Under the motto "Media Summit: The World of Advertising is Changing - Value and Effectiveness in the Glut of Digital Media," top-level managers and over 600 experts at the three-day congress were set to take part in some 90 panels to review trends and developments, backgrounded by the current financial situation.

Munich - Hypo Real Estate (HRE), the German finance company which nearly collapsed last month, applied Wednesday for additional equity funds from the German government's new bail-out plan.

Germany's first big casualty of the current crisis, HRE won 50 billion euros in guarantees earlier this month from the government and German banks.

It said at its head office in Munich it had now applied for a cash injection of 15 billion euros (19 billion dollars) from new federal fund.

It is the first German commercial bank to see help from Soffin, a new government agency created by parliament on October 17.

Previously, three state-owned banks had said they would seek help from Soffin.

Munich  - Legislators in the German state of Bavaria elected a new premier, Horst Seehofer, 59, on Monday after the party he leads, the Christian Social Union (CSU), lost its absolute majority at the polls.

He comfortably won the vote by a 104-71 margin, though four members of the new state coalition, comprising the CSU and the small pro-business Free Democrat Party
(FDP), did not vote for him.

The election marks the end of a 46-year era when the CSU, sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, ruled the prosperous southern state alone.

Munich - The German state of Bavaria was set Monday to elect a new premier, Horst Seehofer, 59, after the party he leads, the Christian Social Union (CSU), lost its absolute majority at the polls.

Seehofer resigned as German minister of agriculture and consumer affairs early Monday so he could take on the new post. Chancellor Angela Merkel has not announced yet who will replace him in her federal cabinet.

Merkel was present as German President Horst Koehler handed Seehofer a certificate of release from office.

Munich - Plans for a costly mass in Rome to celebrate the birthday of Pope Benedict's elder brother have been criticized by a Catholic lay group in Germany, the weekly news magazine Focus reported Sunday.

Georg Ratzinger, a retired priest and former director of music at Regensburg Cathedral in Germany, is to celebrate his 85th birthday on January 15.

The Catholic Diocese of Regensburg plans to spend 100,000 dollars flying 90 boy choristers and 37 musicians to Rome to perform a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart mass in the Sixtine Chapel in the Vatican especially for him.

Monsignor Ratzinger lives in the city of Regensburg and used to conduct the boys' choir.