Berlin  - A new organisation promoting the development and use of renewable energies was launched Monday in the former German capital, Bonn.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) will advise industrialised and developing nations on ways of reducing their dependency on oil, coal and gas.

Speaking at the opening event, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the potential for renewable energies is huge, and needs more help to achieve a global breakthrough.

Berlin - Germany has reduced the scale of its credit guarantees for firms exporting to Iran, but has not stopped them altogether, a government spokesman said Monday.

The business newspaper Handelsblatt reported earlier in the day that German companies trading with Iran will no longer receive government backing.

Berlin, Jan 25 : In a new research, scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany have determined that chalk crystallizes differently from previously believed.

The researchers investigated the crystallization of calcium carbonate, known commonly as chalk, and found that stable nanoclusters form in water with a small quantity of dissolved calcium carbonate, which is not how it was assumed to happen in the past.

The lime scale deposits are created from these tiny chalk particles.

Berlin  - Hertha Berlin decided Thursday against signing Australia midfielder Scott Chipperfield following a medical test.

The club said it was uncertain when the 33-year-old player would recover from a foot injury suffered playing for FC Basel a week ago.

Hertha coach Lucien Favre is looking for a player on the left of midfield who can slot in straight away when the Bundesliga resumes at the end of the month.

Chipperfield was quoted by Basler Zeitung's online edition as saying: "I'm very disappointed but it's still OK for me to return to Basel."

Berlin - Owners of old cars in Germany swamped a hotline with calls this week after the government invited applications for a big cash handout to anyone crushing an old car and buying a new one.

Berlin officials said the hotline registered 270,000 calls on the first day, Monday, far more than telephonists at the trade agency BAFA could answer. On Tuesday the rush ebbed a little to 150,000.

The government has promised 2,500 euros (3,250 dollars) to anyone owning a car more than nine years old who takes it to the wreckers and buys a new low-pollution car.

Rabat/Berlin - Six people were believed to have drowned after a German sailing boat capsized off the port of Mahdia north of the Moroccan capital Rabat in stormy weather, Moroccan police sources said Thursday.

Two days after the accident occurred on Tuesday, there was virtually no hope of finding any of the victims alive, the sources said.

A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry also said that the six, who included three Germans, had probably drowned.

The seventh occupant of the boat, a 19-year-old German woman, managed to swim ashore.