Dusseldorf - Bayer Leverkusen will play their home games in the second half of the Bundesliga season in nearby Dusseldorf but don't see it as a major setback.

"Of course it is a handicap. But I believe we will feel at home there quickly," said Leverkusen managing director Wolfgang Holzhaeuser on Monday.

Leverkusen's BayArena is being extended from its current 22,500 to 30,000 seats until July 2009 which is forcing the team to move out from January onwards. Bayer will play in Dusseldorf's 50,000-seat LTU Arena.

Offenburg, Germany - British actor Christopher Lee, 86, known for his portrayal of Dracula in many horror films, said Monday that he has no plans to give up acting 50 years after achieving his international breakthrough on the silver screen.

"I still fell the passion to play new and interesting roles," Lee said at a Burda Live event in the town of Offenburg in the south-west of Germany.

Lee, who achieved global fame for his portrayal of Count Dracula in the eponymous 1958 film by director Terence Fisher, will appear in four new films in 2009.

Kathmandu, Nov 3: The two major parties of the Nepalese ruling alliance — CPN (Maoist) and CPN-UML — formed a 12-member joint committee to suggest ways to run the government and to smooth out the souring relations between the two parties.

A meeting of the top leaders of the two communist parties held on Sunday at the UML parliamentary party office today formed the coordination committee comprising six members from each party.

Berlin - A national phone-in number set up by citizens' advice bureaux in Germany has fielded 111,000 calls from Germans worried about the global financial crisis in just over a week, organizers said Monday.

Gerd Billen, head of the national advice bureaux association VZBV, appealed to the government to provide more funding for the service, established October 24.

While Germany has not suffered any broad collapse in real-estate prices or major factory closures, concern is widespread about what the future could hold.

Bucharest - Peace negotiations with Israel will likely only resume after completion of Israeli elections in February, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday in Romania.

He also repeated his assertion that any peace agreement will not be completed by the end of 2008, as envisaged at the Annapolis conference in November 2007.

Abbas made his comments while visiting with Romanian President Traian Basescu. During the meeting, Basescu ruled Romania out as a possible mediator in any Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

New Delhi, Nov. 3 : At least 25 people attacked the Maharashtra Sadan here over the state government’s go slow in ordering the arrest of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray.

Thackeray, they claimed, was responsible for the attacks on North Indians in Mumbai and in other parts of Maharashtra, and therefore, should have been detained for disturbing the peace.