Berlin  - Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen AG reported Wednesday a 35-per-cent jump in second-quarter earnings as demand for new models helped to offset surging fuel costs and growing economic uncertainty.

Net profit for the German-based auto group rose to 1.643 billion euros (2.58 billion dollars) compared to 1.22 billion euros posted in the same period last year, with key emerging economies expected to power the company's business growth during the rest of the year.

"This shows that we are on the right track," said VW chief Martin Winterkorn, releasing the results. "Our innovative products are meeting with an enthusiastic response from our customers."

Karlsruhe, Germany - A man who has sought legal recognition as a woman will be allowed to stay married to his wife, Germany's constitutional court ruled Wednesday.

The top court ruled as unconstitutional legislation that would have effectively forced persons having sex changes to dissolve their marriages. The law only allows a sex change by single people.

The man, who was born in 1929, married 56 years ago and fathered three adult children, has felt for many years that he was really a woman, but he has an intact marriage which he does not want to abandon, the court heard.

Berlin - Europe factory orders slumped sharply in May, data released Wednesday showed, led by falling demand for electronic equipment and manufacturing goods.

Berlin - German pilots union Cockpit expressed satisfaction Wednesday with a strike targeting Lufthansa subsidiaries CityLine and Eurowings as it entered its second and last day.

Hamburg - Within a decade, most new cars will be equipped with clean-drive technology and a host of easy to serve technical gadgets that will make driving much more comfortable and safer than today.

Engineers are currently working on several technologies that were still fiction in the 1980s American television series Knight Rider in which David Hasselhoff is partnered by an autonomous car called KITT with artificial intelligence.

Berlin - A pilots' union in Germany called a sudden strike Tuesday to disrupt the air-passenger operations of two Lufthansa domestic subsidiaries and back up demands for a big hike in pay.

There was only two hours of warning that many flights by the Eurowings and CityLine units of Lufthansa, which operate short-haul connections within Germany and to nearby nations, would be grounded for 36 hours from noon till midnight Wednesday.

The union, Vereinigung Cockpit, represents pilots and flight-deck engineers. Some flights were expected to continue, since the union does not represent all the pilots employed at the two lines.