Berlin  - German wholesale prices soared in July, rising 9.9 per cent on the year on the back of higher fuel costs, the official statistics office reported from Wiesbaden.

The rise was the strongest in the indicator since November 1981. Over the month, wholesale prices rose 1.4 per cent.

German wholesale prices have been rising sharply in recent months. The indicator showed an annual increase of 8.9 per cent in June and 8.1 per cent in May.

Fuels and mineral oil products saw a price rise of 30.8 per cent on the year and as much as 6.2 per cent on the month of August.

Hamburg  - A tiny beer-swilling, rodent-like jungle creature which drinks the equivalent of a case of 3.8 per cent beer every night and never gets inebriated may hold the clue to the ultimate hangover cure for humans, according to German scientists.

The Malaysian pen-tailed tree shrew drinks the beer-like fermented nectar of the flowers of the bertram's palm in such quantities that the equivalent amount of alcohol would cause a human to collapse in a drunken stupor, say the scientists from Bayreuth University in Germany.

Striped designs: External hard drives from Toshiba

Toshiba has announced plans to introduce three new external hard drives in late August. The 2.5 inch devices offer up to 160, 250, and 320 gigabytes of storage space respectively, connected via U. S. B 2.0. The hard drives stand out for their unusual design: each casing is black with either green, red or grey stripes. The manufacturer has yet to name a price.

Quiet runner from Leipzig: Business laptop from Schenker

Hanover, Germany - When the CeBIT rolled out in March 2008, nobody had an answer to the small yet affordable Asus EeePC.

The market has rushed to fill the gap in the interim, however, with several new devices seeking to make headway in the netbook market. Devices in this class are designed to have dimensions comparable to a sheet of paper and weigh just one kilogramme, yet cost a fraction of their similarly dimensioned cousins, the subnotebook.

Even so, buyers must make clear sacrifices in terms of options and performance.

Berlin - Most German senior citizens - or 58 per cent of those over 65 - have neither a mobile phone nor computer while the figure plunges to 5 per cent in the 14- to 
29-year age group, a study by the researcher Aris for BITKOM, a technology industry association found.

"The digital divide in society is mainly a divide between old and young," said BITKOM President August-Wilhelm Scheer.

Hamburg - In this digital age, there are still plenty of opportunities, private and professional, to exchange business cards.

Companies generally print standardized business cards for their employees. But the self-employed often find the costs of printing sufficient numbers too high. Making your own cards on your PC is a cheaper alternative.

There are a variety of programs to create business cards. Office supply and software companies like Sigel, Avery, Zweckform and Data Becker offer sets of card-creating software and special paper with pre-punched cards. These easy-to-use programs also come with a variety of fonts and graphics.