Berlin - German childcare authorities said Monday they had taken into care the 12-year-old son of Christiane F, whose tale of drug abuse and prostitution as a
14-year-old in Berlin found an international audience 30 years ago.

"She can no longer fulfil her parental and care duties," a spokeswoman for the Youth Department in Potsdam near Berlin said.

Berlin- Germany called Monday for an immediate ceasefire in Georgia and the withdrawal of troops by both sides in the widening conflict centred on the breakaway South Ossetia region.

Chancellor Angela Merkel had telephoned Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to call for all hostilities to be halted, official spokesman Thomas Steg said in Berlin.

Georgia's territorial integrity should be respected, he added.

Berlin  - German wholesale prices soared in July, rising 9.9 per cent on the year on the back of higher fuel costs, the official statistics office reported from Wiesbaden.

The rise was the strongest in the indicator since November 1981. Over the month, wholesale prices rose 1.4 per cent.

German wholesale prices have been rising sharply in recent months. The indicator showed an annual increase of 8.9 per cent in June and 8.1 per cent in May.

Fuels and mineral oil products saw a price rise of 30.8 per cent on the year and as much as 6.2 per cent on the month of August.

Berlin - Most German senior citizens - or 58 per cent of those over 65 - have neither a mobile phone nor computer while the figure plunges to 5 per cent in the 14- to 
29-year age group, a study by the researcher Aris for BITKOM, a technology industry association found.

"The digital divide in society is mainly a divide between old and young," said BITKOM President August-Wilhelm Scheer.

Berlin  - Oskar Lafontaine, the maverick former Social Democrat (SPD) politician, is to lead the socialist Left party in state elections in Germany's western Saarland next year, after gaining the clear support of Left members in the state Saturday.

Lafontaine, who walked out of the government of former SPD chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in 1999 after just six months as Finance Minister, garnered 122 of 132 votes cast at the party congress held at Neunkirchen in the state.

Berlin  - German federal police (BKA) have warned in a secret report that the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement has the capacity to undertake damaging attacks in Germany, the news magazine Focus reported Saturday.

The militia had the logistics "to carry out widescale attacks on physical and human targets," the weekly said in a report released ahead of publication.

The BKA is reported to number Hezbollah supporters in Germany at around 900.

Focus pointed to the case of a 29-year-old medical student at Germany's Goettingen University, who was detained in Israel last month.