Stuttgart - Daimler Saturday declined to comment on rumours that Swedish investor Cevian Capital is planning to take a major stake in the German vehicle maker with the aim of pushing through the sale of the truck division.

Selling off Daimler Trucks "is not an issue for us," a company spokesman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in Stuttgart, where Daimler has its headquarters.

He declined to comment on rumours that Cevian aimed to take a substantial stake in the company, which has seen its share price virtually halve since October last year to trade at under 40 euros (57 dollars) on Friday.

"Every investor is welcome to us," the spokesman said with regard to the Cevian rumours.

Berlin - Commerzbank Chief Executive Martin Blessing has defended the price Germany's second-largest bank paid to take over rival Dresdner in an interview published by Der Spiegel news magazine on Saturday.

Blessing described the 9.8 billion euros (14.4 billion dollars) paid to insurer Allianz as "not cheap but fair" highlighting the fact that much of the deal had been done with Commerzbank shares.

In addition, the new bank aimed to realize synergies worth 5 billion euros, he said.

Cologne, Germany  - Germany's main Muslim bodies cut their links Friday to Germany's only professor of Islamic religion, charging that Muhammad Kalisch had questioned the existence of the Prophet Mohammed and Muslim beliefs about the origin of the Koran.

Kalisch teaches at the University of Muenster in northern Germany.

The four main Muslim groups had been represented on a board of advisors to his Centre for Islamic Religious Studies (CRS) since the chair was established, but there has been friction over his academic publications.

Berlin  - A select group of Berlin motorists are to obtain subsidized electric cars as part of an experiment launched Friday by Daimler and a leading German electricity company, RWE.

The auto company is to supply 100 cars powered by lithium-ion batteries. The cars will mostly be from its Smart micro-car marque and will have a range of about 100 kilometres from a single charge.

Kiel, Germany - German scientists issued details Friday of a research project to extract an untapped source of energy on the ocean floors and at the same time replace it with unwanted carbon dioxide.

The project, sponsored by the German government, could solve two of the world's problems at the same time: gas hydrates in seabed rock could meet the shortfall when oilfields and gasfields run dry, and climate change could be reduced by sequestering the CO2.

Hanover, Germany - Germany's biggest package-holiday company, TUI, said Friday it would establish a new hotel brand, Sensimar, and franchise the first three hotels in the chain in Greece and Turkey.

They are to open next summer on Crete and Rhodes and on the Turkish Riviera, the company based in Hanover said. By 2012, TUI aims to have a chain of 10 to 15 Sensimar hotels in operation in major holiday destinations.