Frankfurt, Germany  - The hungry guests are gathered around the table, eagerly awaiting their evening meal but over in the kitchen it is simply chaos.

Preparing a three-course meal is a potentially stressful experience. Indeed a simple invitation to friends, relatives or colleagues to spend a few happy hours dining can easily degenerate into a fiasco with a burnt casserole in the oven and red faces all around.

Of course, even people who only cook now and again can manage to come up with a perfect, three-course evening meal that would do justice to any restaurant. Required are judicious planning, a minimum of manual dexterity and sufficient time to prepare.

Frankfurt, Germany  - Franz Simon, a senior citizen from Frankfurt, enjoys using his local playground every day.

When going for a stroll, the 80-year-old likes to use a foot rocker in a forest playground for children and elderly people that has been a public amenity since 2007.

"I immediately fell in love with the foot rocker because old and young people can use it together," said Simon of the "cross generational exercise machine."

Frankfurt, Germany  - The head of the German division of the home products retailer, IKEA, says the company's male customers have a bad track record compared to its female clients when it comes to putting furniture together.

"Men never look at the instruction leaflet and have the most problems when assembling our furniture because they think they can do it without help," Petra Hesser told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview.

Women, on the other hand, study the instructions and are methodical when it comes to getting the job done.

"A woman will neatly lay out all the screws while a man will throw them in a pile. Something always goes missing."

Frankfurt - The German economy faces a tough winter, the country's influential central bank said Monday, as economic confidence dwindles, consumers grow reluctant to spend and exports fall.

The Bundesbank said in its monthly bulletin there had been "a marked worsening" of the circumstances surrounding Europe's biggest economy with the report adding to the pressure on the European Central Bank to continue cutting interest rates.

Frankfurt - European shares opened sharply down Friday after the failure of the US car industry bail-out sent stocks tumbling in Asia.

With shares in major European bourses falling in early trading, Europe's blue-chip Stoxx 50 opened down more than 4 per cent at 2,379.99 points.

This followed a 2.8-per-cent fall in shares in Europe's leading market in London and a more dramatic 3.8-per-cent slump in Frankfurt, where the failure of the rescue plan for the crisis-hit US car industry sparked big falls in key German car stocks.

Frankfurt - German police said Wednesday they briefly detained seven demonstrator