Munich - Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) lost its decades-old absolute majority on Sunday as voters defected to smaller parties in a state election seen as a test of support ahead of national polls next year.

Computer projections showed a swing of more than 17 per cent away from the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), forcing it to look for a coalition partner.

The CSU polled 43.5 per cent of the vote in its worst showing in half-a-century. The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), which governs in a grand coalition with Merkel's party in Berlin, polled 18.6 per cent, 1 per cent less than in the last state election in 2003.

Munich - Mini plans to extend its range with a compact SUV study featuring four doors, four-wheel drive and four single seats that will be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in October.

Planned for production in 2010, the teaser images released by the BMW subsidiary show two conventional doors positioned on the passenger side with a third for the driver. The fourth door, for the rear passenger on the driver's side, slides back along the outside of the car for convenient access and loading.

The rear door has a frameless, retractable window and when open, swivels to one side to facilitate the loading of long items, such as skis, snowboards and surfboards.

Munich - A speed difference of only 10 kilometres an hour is the thin line between life and death, according to a crash test recently conducted by Germany's automobile association (ADAC).

At a moderate speed of 80 km/h on a country road, the driver can still bring the vehicle to a standstill within 50 metres when braking hard.

But at a speed of only 10 km/h more at 100 km/h, the vehicle would crash into the obstacle at a speed of 64 km/h, the test found.

At that speed, the crash test vehicle, a Renault Laguna, still had an intact safety cell with the dummy driver, passenger and children on the rear seat, risking no serious injury, according to the test results. The airbags still functioned.

Munich, September 9 : Using ESO’s (European Southern Observatory’s) Very Large Telescope, astronomers have been able to study planet-forming discs around young Sun-like stars in unsurpassed detail, clearly revealing the motion and distribution of the gas in the inner parts of the disc, which implies the presence of giant planets.

Planets could be home to other forms of life, so the study of exoplanets ranks very high in contemporary astronomy.

More than 300 planets are already known to orbit stars other than the Sun, and these new worlds show an amazing diversity in their characteristics.

Munich - Programs like Outlook and Thunderbird are useful for sending and receiving e-mail messages. Another option is to sign up for an e-mail account with one of the many services on the internet. All correspondence can then be handled fully online. The same services often offer a pay-version alongside the cost-free ones, promising extra functionality in the process. Are the extra services worth the cost?

Munich - It may have sounded like science fiction 20 years ago, but it's now reality: computers listen to what you say.

Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 is the latest incarnation of Nuance's speech recognition software for PCs. And rival company Linguatec has announced the release date of the successor to Voice Pro 11 this autumn. That means that updated versions of the two key programs in voice recognition industry will be available in stores at the same time. But what are these programs really capable of, and who can benefit the most from them?