Frankfurt  - Thousands of people attended demonstrations organized by pro-Israel groups in several German cities on Sunday against the Islamic extremist group Hamas.

The rallies generally began with a minute of silence for both Israelis and Palestinians killed during the long-running conflict.

Around 1,500 people gathering in the central German city of Frankfurt for a three-hour demonstration. They were opposed by about 100 supporters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization holding a counter-demonstration. Police said there was no violence.

Among the speakers at the Frankfurt demonstration was a former deputy chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Michel Friedman.

Berlin  - Germany is to inject government funding into engine-design work in the car industry, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.

She spoke as the industry, a key German exporter, scales back production amid plunging worldwide sales.

"Germany invented the first cars a century ago. Now we are in a fresh competition to see if German industry can build the 21st century car," Merkel, who has a doctorate in physics, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

She said German carmakers had to try harder to innovate.

Oberhof, Germany  - Kati Wilhelm delighted a German home crowd when she outlasted Russian Olga Medvedtseva for victory in a biathlon World Cup mass start race on Sunday.

Wilhelm attacked on the final climb and clocked 39 minutes 55.2 seconds for the 12.5-kilometres race as she claimed her first season victory and 19th overall.

Medvedtseva trailed by 5.8 seconds and Sweden's Helena Jonsson was 11.8 seconds adrift as the top three finishers each missed two of 20 targets in the shooting range.

Darya Domracheva of Belarus met disaster when she shot in the standing instead of the required prone position in the second round of shooting. She was given five penalty loops and retired shortly afterwards.

Berlin, Jan 11 : Scientists have determined that the observed increase of warm years after 1990 is not a statistical accident as has been claimed by some climate skeptics.

Scientists at the GKSS Research Centre of Geesthacht in Germany and the University of Bern in Switzerland have investigated the frequency of warmer than average years between 1880 and 2006 for the first time.

Between 1880 and 2006 the average global annual temperature was about 15 degrees Celsius. However, in the years after 1990, the frequency of years when this average value was exceeded increased.

The researchers' result indicated that the observed increase of warm years after 1990 is not a statistical accident.

Hamburg  - Mac OS X's mail program sometimes stops showing all of the messages on launch. One potential cause of this is an extremely high number of e-mail messages in the inbox, particularly when that number reaches several thousand.

To solve the problem, copy the "mail" folder found in the Library section of the your private directory. Then open the original mail file and delete the "Envelope Index" found there.

Berlin  - Around 10 to 20 per cent of all computer users report aches and pains related to the use of the mouse.

"The repetition of stereotypical movements in particular can lead to chronic disorders," explains occupational psychologist Hardo Sorgatz from the Technical University of Darmstadt. Specialists often speak of repetitive stress injury (RSI) syndrome, known popularly as "mouse arm."