Kolkata, Dec 6 : Kolkata police has unearthed a massive mobile SIM card racket in the city following disclosures from Mumbai that two SIM cards used by terrorists in the Mumbai attacks were from this metropolis.

The Kolkata police have arrested a Kolkata resident Tauseef Rehman and a Srinagar resident Mukhtar Ahmed Sheikh in connection with the SIM card racket. They were produced at Bankshall City Civil and Sessions Court today and remanded to police custody till December 14.

Hamburg - The fairy tales are over for German football as national team manager Oliver Bierhoff urged hard work for future success in an interview published on Saturday.

"We must realize that the summer fairy tale, and the summer fairy tale 'reloaded' - if you want to give Euro 2008 this name - is over ... We must be down to earth again," Bierhoff told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Prague - Czech President Vaclav Klaus Saturday cut ties with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek on the eve of the Czech Republic's EU presidency and a half year before European Parliament elections.

Speaking at a key party congress, Klaus said he "definitively" yielded honorary chairmanship of the party he founded nearly 18 years ago because he could not identify with the policies of its current leadership.

"I know for sure that these are not the policies with which I founded and led the ODS for many years," he told the shocked delegates.

Frankfurt - Deutsche Boerse, the company that runs the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, is in merger talks with the New York Stock Exchange company, the news magazine Der Spiegel said Saturday.

NYSE Euronext of Wall Street is the world's biggest operator of financial markets.

A spokesman for Deutsche Boerse declined comment on the Spiegel report that its chief executive, Reto Francioni, presented a report last week to his executive board on a possible merger.

BAGHDAD, Dec. 6 : Fifteen-year-old Rania al Ambaki, a resident of Baquba, an al-Qaeda hotspot north of Baghdad, was made into a human bomb at an Iraq security checkpoint recently.

According to a CBS report, Ambaki was promptly immobilized, and officers jammed cell phone signals that could detonate the explosives. Thereafter, her suicide vest was removed.

Baquba is known to be a recruiting ground for women suicide bombers. Last year, there were eight women bombers. So far this year, there have been 35.

La Clusaz, France - Petter Northug of Norway gave another demonstration of his sprint finish strength on Saturday to win a 30 kilometres cross-country ski race.

Northug, 22, was unstoppable on the home stretch of the freestyle mass start race in France as he claimed his third career victory in 1 hour 19 minutes 26.5 seconds in driving snowfall.

Dario Cologna of Italy was beaten by three tenth of a second as he climbed a World Cup podium for the first time in his career in second place.

Compatriot Giorgio di Centa and Alexander Legkov of Russia were joint third, 2.0 seconds behind Northug.