Bonn, Germany  - Security experts have discovered a security gap in the Acrobat Reader and Acrobat applications from Adobe. An update to close them will likely be available in March, the German Federal Agency for Security in IT (BSI) announced. Until then, users are advised to deactivate the JavaScript functionality of both programs.

This is done under the menu item Edit/Preferences/Category JavaScript. Remove the check mark under "Enable Acrobat JavaScript."

Bonn  - Deutsche Telekom AG shares rose Friday after Europe's biggest phone company reported a fourth-quarter loss of 730 million euros (930 million dollars) and unveiled a major revamp of its business structure.

The result in the final three months of 2008 compared to 750 million euro loss for the same quarter in 2007, with the Bonn-based company saying it is combining its fixed-line and mobile-phone business in one unit.

Deutsche Telekom has been battling to address a big loss of fixed line subscribers from the company in the face of fierce competition in its domestic German market.

The company's shares rose 2 per cent to 9.67 euros following the release of the results.

Bonn, Germany  - Employers should not ignore an employee's complaints of mobbing, which is broadly defined as harassment ranging from verbal abuse, in person or on the telephone, to threats, gag orders, sexual harassment and physical violence.

A German publisher based in Bonn said ignoring the problem could have negative effects on the atmosphere in the office, and on productivity. In addition, ignoring mobbing could have legal consequences. Employers could be sued, for example, for failing to provide assistance.

Every day in Germany, an estimated 1.5 million employees are mobbed, according to the country's federal authority for worker protection and medicine. Nearly half or 43.9 per cent become ill following the period in which they were mobbed.

Bonn, Germany  - Windows users should use th

Bonn, Germany  - The latest major threat to computing safety, the Conficker worm, is spreading rapidly throughout the internet. The worm represents less of a risk to home PCs than networked computers at corporations and institutions, but that does not mean that stand- alone computers are immune to the threat, says Katrin Alberts from the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn.

The first crucial step for all users is to install the Microsoft patch (MS08-067) designed to close the security gap in Windows. A virus scanner with current virus definitions is also a must for identifying and removing the ill-intentioned program.

Bonn, Germany - Retirement once meant imminent death in many cases. People stopped working at age 65 and some dropped dead a few months later.

"This was a much greater problem in former times," remarked Uwe Kleinemas, director of the Centre for the Cultures of Ageing at the University of Bonn. Thanks to improved working conditions, people today were no longer so physically exhausted at the end of their working lives.

Kleinemas noted a wholly different problem faced by many older people, however: "They want to continue working but are not permitted to do so." This, too, can be hazardous to health.