Berlin - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier demanded greater advances to the reforms in Bosnia-Herzegovina during talks Tuesday with his Slovakian counterpart Miroslav Lajcak.

The discussion focused on developments in the western Balkans, a region including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo.

The willingness in recent months to drive forward the reform process in the region had been "downright insufficient," Steinmeier said.

Berlin - Germany handed nine pirates, captured off Somalia, to Kenyan custody on Tuesday, where the men now face prosecution for attacking a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden.

The German foreign ministry confirmed that the Kenyan police received the marauders in the harbour city of Mombasa, where the navy frigate Rheinland Pfalz had docked a week after seizing the nine men.

The frigate, which forms part of the EU's anti-piracy mission Atalanta, had apprehended the pirates when they attacked a German merchant vessel with anti-tank missiles and firearms.

Berlin - German exports slumped by 4.4 per cent in January, data released Tuesday showed, as the global recession hits Europe's biggest economy.

The fall in exports was more than the 4 per cent predicted by economists and followed a sharp 4-per-cent drop in December with the world's leading export nation facing a dramatic decline in demand in its key markets in Europe, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Berlin - German police arrested Monday a teenager in the city of Leipzig in connection with the murder of an eight-year-old girl more than six months ago.

A 19-year-old man living in the neighbourhood of the murdered girl had been apprehended, police told the daily Leipziger Volkszeitung. They declined to say whether he had confessed to the crime.

The eight-year-old girl, Michelle, had disappeared on her way home after playing with friends on August 18. Three days later, her body was found in a pond.

Berlin - German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung began a three-day trip on Monday to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, where he is to visit German military troops.

Germany has come under pressure to provide more troops and logistics to the NATO-led effort in Afghanistan, but at the weekend US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stressed it was up to Berlin to decide on any reinforcements.

Berlin  - The lower the sun is in the sky, the less harmful its ultra violet rays are for the body's skin, according to Professor Hans Meffert writing in the German medical journal, Aktuelle Dermatologie.

The intensity of the ultra violet rays can be assessed by comparing the body with the length of the shadow cast by the sun, Meffert added.

Ultra violet rays pose a small risk to skin type II, which is common in the Northern Hemisphere, when your shadow is approximately a third longer than your body.