Berlin  - Europe's biggest rail company Deutsche Bahn AG is considering investing in Italy's passenger train operations, Germany's daily Die Welt reported Tuesday.

The newspaper reported that the German-based Deutsche Bahn has been holding talks with Fiat and Ferrari president Luca Cordero di Montezemolo's newly formed private high-speed rail service group Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV).

Kuala Lumpur  - Malaysia's IT research company Mimos is to begin joint research with Germany's Ruhr-University Bochum in efforts to tackle cybercrime, a news report said Tuesday.

Both parties had recently signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct joint research into a hardware that could block security invasions on the internet, The Star newspaper's online news portal said.

"Phishing, pharming, virus attacks and hacking of systems belonging to companies is no longer done for fun or curiosity but is now big business, as there is money to made from such invasions," Mohamed Ridza Wahiddin, head of Mimos' Information Security Cluster, was quoted as saying.

Stockholm - The consortium that plans to build an underwater Baltic Sea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany on Monday released an overview of the project to date.

The report said the Nord Stream AG consortium had considered various routes and concluded that "the off-shore route turns out to be the more environmental friendly," citing that a land-based route would "cross ecologically sensitive areas on land and possibly conflict with alternative land use."

Berlin - German childcare authorities said Monday they had taken into care the 12-year-old son of Christiane F, whose tale of drug abuse and prostitution as a
14-year-old in Berlin found an international audience 30 years ago.

"She can no longer fulfil her parental and care duties," a spokeswoman for the Youth Department in Potsdam near Berlin said.

Berlin- Germany called Monday for an immediate ceasefire in Georgia and the withdrawal of troops by both sides in the widening conflict centred on the breakaway South Ossetia region.

Chancellor Angela Merkel had telephoned Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to call for all hostilities to be halted, official spokesman Thomas Steg said in Berlin.

Georgia's territorial integrity should be respected, he added.