Berlin  - Austrian cyclist Bernhard Kohl has denied claiming that half the field in cycling is using CERA, the third generation of the blood booster EPO.

Kohl, who has been banned for two years for doping, said via his lawyers that he had never accused other riders of using the drug.

According to a Wiener Zeitung report, Kohl said in his hearing with the Austrian anti-doping agency that the drug was discussed in detail by riders and some thought that "probably half the riders were underway with CERA."

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government suffered a shock setback

Berlin - Two German foreign officials as well as two employees of the German airline Lufthansa were freed Friday from a luxury hotel at the centre of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Both the German Foreign Office and Lufthansa confirmed that their employees had been released from the Oberoi Trident hotel.

"They could leave the hotel," a Lufthansa spokesman said, adding that all the airline's employees in Mumbai had now been brought to safety.

Berlin - A long-awaited decision on whether or not to reprise the former Hohenzollern royal palace on Berlin's Schlossplatz as the site of the new Humboldt Forum is expected to be made on Friday, November 28.

The royal palace was blown up in the post-World War II years by the communists.

Now the question is whether it should be rebuilt along the same lines as the original, or be followed by a more modern piece of architecture.

Berlin - Suspected doping cases are being investigated in cycling and cross-country skiing, an anti-doping forum was told on Thursday.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) fears more doping cases as blood profiles of cyclists are evaluated, its president, Pat McQuaid, said.

Meanwhile the international ski federation FIS is examining five suspicious blood profiles by cross-country skiers, Swedish doping specialist Bengt Saltin said.

He said it was hoped to release the results of the evaluation within the next four weeks.

McQuaid said a few of the profiles in biological passports introduced by the UCI this year show "irregularities" which could point to the use of banned substances or methods.

Berlin  - A 12-year-old German girl was in critical condition in a Berlin hospital Thursday after a bomb planted in her family's letter-box exploded, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The police murder squad declined comment on media reports that the attack Wednesday may have been part of a feud in the poor, multi-ethnic capital-city district of Neukoelln.

Newspapers said the schoolgirl's arm was almost shredded by the explosion as she was taking mail out of the box. Earlier in the day her father had found a bomb attached to his car, disarmed it and took it to police.