Berlin - German security services have identified the man who appeared in an al-Qaeda video directed at Germany, Interior Ministry sources said in Berlin on Monday.

The man was born in Morocco in 1977, has German nationality and lived in the area around the former West German capital of Bonn for a while, the sources said.

Known to be active in Islamist circles, the German-speaking man has been in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region since 2007, they added.

The man, wearing a black turban and facecloth that left only his eyes visible, demanded Germany withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in the video that was posted on an Islamist website on Saturday.

Hamburg - A gas leak at a school in the northern German sta

Hamburg, Germany - Honey bees are more effective than insecticides in keeping harmful pests such as caterpillars away from your prize flowers, according to a team of German scientists.

Like winged watchdogs, honey bees chase away intruders who threaten to devour their beloved pollination buds. Not only do they chase away humans, but also other bugs.

Caterpillars are particularly sensitive to bees since the buzzing of the insects' wings irritates the sensitive hairs on their bodies.

Unable to tell apart a harmless bee and a predatory wasp, the leaf-munching larvae are frightened away, according to researcher Dr Jurgen Tautz, from the University of Wurzburg in Germany.

Berlin  - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) won a regional election Sunday in the German state of Hesse, enabling the party to form a coalition after 12 months of political stalemate.

The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), who govern at the national level with the CDU, saw their share of the vote plunge to an historic low after narrowly failing to unseat CDU Prime Minister Roland Koch a year ago in a closely contested state election.

Berlin  - Germany was urged to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in a video believed to have been made by a member of the terrorist network Al-Qaeda.

A German-speaker wearing a black turban and facecloth that left only his eyes visible spoke in the 30-minute video, which was posted on the internet on Saturday.

The message, delivered by a man calling himself "Abu Talha, the German," was titled "Rescue Plan for Germany". It contained Arabic subtitles.

It made no direct threats against Germany, but said the country was "gullible and naive" to believe it could "emerge unscathed" from having the third-biggest contingent of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, attending the Sharm el-Sheikh summit on the Gaza crisis, called Sunday for an end to weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip.