Berlin - Pirates who seized a German gas tanker in the Gulf of Aden are demanding 6 million dollars for the vessel's release, sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Monday.

A spokesman for the German operators of the MV Longchamp declined to confirm the demand.

The captain of the 3,500-ton ship had reportedly expressed fears for the safety of the 13-member crew - 12 Filipinos and one Indonesian - if the hijacking is not resolved peacefully.

Hamburg  - American Serena Williams has regained the women's world number one tennis ranking after beating Dinara Safina in two sets in the final of the Australian Open on Saturday.

Williams heads the rankings published by the ruling body WTA on Monday by 282 points from Safina. Williams has 9,432 points, while the Russian stands on 9,150 points.

Serbian Jelena Jankovic, who topped the rankings ahead of the Australian Open, slipped to third, with Nadia Petrova the only newcomer into the top ten.

The Russian is tenth with 3,882 points.

Berlin - A special series of films at this year's Berlinale film festival commemorates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Under the motto, "After Winter Comes Spring", documentaries, animations and feature films made in eastern Europe in the years leading up to the fall of communism are due to be screened.

According to the Museum for Film and Television in Berlin, at the time of their production, the films gave an honest view of life under totalitarian regimes, auguring the changes that lay ahead.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany  - Lindsey Vonn of the United States claimed her fourth World Cup victory of the season with a commanding super-g performance in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Sunday.

It was a second successive win for the reigning World Cup champion and the 19th of her career following a slalom victory on Friday.

Sweden's Anja Paerson also underlined her ascendant form by finishing second, with fellow Swede Jessica Lindell-Vikarby third.

Vonn posted 1 minute 22.16 seconds on the newly-designed Kandahar course, 0.39 seconds up on Paerson, with Lindell-Vikarby, winner of the previous super-g in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, 0.72 seconds back.

Berlin  - A proposed law, aimed at streamlining environmental legislation in Germany, has failed, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Sunday.

"Germany will still have no straightforward, transparent and unbureaucratic environmental law in one piece," Gabriel said.

The environment minister, of the centre-left SPD party, was critical of the internal political wranglings inherent to the process by which individual state approval is sought for proposals to pass.

Berlin  - German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is calling for greater efforts in integrating Germany's immigrant communities, in particular those of Turkish origin, in a newspaper article to be published Monday.

"The linguistic integration, especially of citizens of Turkish origin, must be improved", Schaeuble wrote for Monday's edition of the Hamburger Abendblatt.

"We need more intensive pre-school preparation for children of migrants, so they can use education as an opportunity," the interior minister wrote.

Figures released last week showed that Germany's population of Turkish descent is poorly integrated, compared to other immigrant groups.