Waren, Germany  - Completion of the controversial Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea is likely to be delayed by one year from 2011 to 2012, a German executive working on the Russian-led project said Wednesday.

His comment clashed with a printed news release from Nord Stream, a consortium with Russian, German and Dutch involvement, which stated that 2011 was the target for the first flow.

"We don't expect the first natural gas to arrive till 2012," said Andreas Hieckmann, the project chief at the Gazprom Germania company.

Saarburg, Germany - The last purely French military unit in Germany will be pulled out by 2010, a senior Paris official said Wednesday in Saarburg, on the German side of the border.

The 200-hectare French base was set up at Saarburg near Trier during the Allied occupation after the Second World War. It is currently home to a French infantry unit of
1,000 soldiers.

Jean-Marie Bockel, a junior defence minister, said the unit would probably move to Strasbourg, France.

Munich : Siemens, the German engineering group, confirmed Wednesday plans to dispose of a transportation-division plant that employs 950 people in the Czech Republic, but said it hopes to find a buyer rather than close the site.

The components plant in Prague was earmarked for disposal as part of a scheme to save German jobs during the current job-cutting drive at the Munich-based group, which seeks to shrink its workforce while keeping the same volume of business.

Siemens said the site makes components for the group's high-speed Velaro trains, known in Germany as inter-city expresses (ICE), and for slower passenger trains.

Essen, Germany - Italian confectionery group Ferrero has awarded a 91-million-euro (1

Ludwigshafen, Germany  - German prosecutors closed the file Wednesday on a building fire that killed nine Turkish Alawite people in Germany, saying they were convinced it had been an accident.

Many Turkish people have expressed a feeling that the February 3 fire may have been a cleverly disguised racist attack.

But prosecutors said they had "almost certainly" ruled out arson. The fire had begun under the staircase of the multistoreyed apartment block in the factory town of Ludwigshafen, south of Frankfurt.

No technical defect was found in the building, so the fire must have been caused by some sort of "negligent behaviour."

Stockholm - A German woman who was extradited to Sweden on suspicion of beating two young children to death with a hammer was Wednesday formally charged with murder and attempted murder.

Prosecutor Frieda Gummesson filed the charges at the district court in Vasteras, and said the woman - a 32-year-old student - had used a hammer or similar tool to repeatedly hit the children, aged one and three, and their mother, who survived with injuries.

The attack took place March 17 in the small town of Arboga.

The motive appeared to be that the German woman refused to accept that her former partner had begun a new relationship with the mother of the children, the prosecutor said.