Dusseldorf - Fujifilm, the Japanese group, said Friday its total sales in Europe had been steady last year, slightly increasing to 2.8 billion euros (3.7 billion dollars).

Fujifilm offers its products in 20 European nations. A Fujifilm spokeswoman said European sales made up 16 per cent of Fujifilm's world sales and this proportion was tending upwards.

Fujifilm Europe chief executive Shigehiro Nakajima said he was "cautiously optimistic" about sales, despite a difficult market environment and the recession.

Dusseldorf - German organizers have expressed their delight that players can earn world ranking points at the World Team Cup tournament from next year onwards.

"This one of the best news in the tournament's 32-year history, it is like an early Christmas present," said tournament director Dietloff von Arnim on Monday night.

The ATP has agreed that players at the team event can earn up to 250 points each for the singles and doubles rankings. The move was expected as points will also awarded in the Davis Cup.

Dusseldorf - Israeli author Amos Oz was presented on Saturday with a top German award for his political and literary work.

Oz, 69, was honoured by the city of Dusseldorf with the Heinrich Heine Prize for combining "literary creativity with political sensibility and humanistic commitment."

The award, worth 50,000 euros (66,000 dollars), is named after the 19th century German poet. It has been presented every two years since 1972 to personalities who share Heine's values of tolerance, human rights and mutual understanding of peoples.

Oz, who was born in Jerusalem in 1939, is one of Israel's best-known authors and political voices. He is a co-founder of the Israeli peace movement and a prominent champion of Palestinian rights.

Dusseldorf - A female German journalist was given a suspended, 20-month jail term Thursday for supporting a far-left Turkish group that is blamed for terrorist attacks.

Heike S, 43, had originally been accused of membership in the terrorist wing of Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Partisi-Cephesi (DHKP-C), a party seeking a Marxist-Leninist state in Turkey.

The court in Dusseldorf convicted her on the lesser charge of supporting a terrorist group.

The group is accused of firebombing Turkish missions in Germany and beating up renegades and rivals.

Dusseldorf - A Lebanese man convicted of trying to blow up two German trains in 2006 reacted with an obscene hand gesture after receiving a life sentence from the High Court in Dusseldorf on Tuesday.

Youssef al-Hajj Dib displayed two middle finger to photographers after the verdict was announced. He was led from the tightly guarded courtroom to begin serving his sentence for multiple attempted murders.

The 24-year-old self-declared "holy warrior" "planned a terrible bloodbath" and was the Islamist mastermind and perpetrator of "an utterly terrorist act," the court said.

Dusseldorf  - A Dusseldorf court Tuesday convicted a Lebanese man of planting bombs on two trains in Germany that would have caused mass carnage if they had exploded.