Cologne, Germany  - Being a holiday rep host may seem like a walk in the park, but in actual fact it has little to do with relaxation and involves hard work despite staying in a hotel and getting plenty of sun, sea and exercise.

The job of is to keep guests amused and making sure they are having fun.

In return, "You get to work in a beautiful place and have contact with happy people," says Jeannette Georges who has eight years experience as a holiday rep is currently working on Mallorca.

Hamburg - Orchids, cyclamen and cacti - put them next to one another on a windowsill, add a little fantasy and together they become more than just a few plants positioned where the sun shines in.

They become a lovingly-arranged, potted garden assembled with the help of a huge selection of house plants now available in shops.

"Thirty years ago you had more or less the same 10 plants, but today there are about 250 green candidates to choose from," said John Langley, a master florist from Hamburg.

Berlin  - Whether it makes coffee or drills holes in walls, whether it's a luxury item or a basic model, just about every modern household product is expected to have some style to it.

But pretty packaging is not the same as good design and the challenge facing most designers is to bring form and function together.

"Bad design means that ergonomics and functions were not given high enough priority," says Peter Knopp, an industrial designer from Scheyern in southern Germany.

Samples of bad design include mobile phones with tiny buttons or those beautiful kettles whose owners run the risk of burning themselves, if they pick them up clumsily.

Berlin  - Germany slumped into a recession during the third quarter, data to be released Thursday is forecast to show, amid signs that a global economic downturn was taking hold.

Europe's biggest economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter, analysts predict Thursday's figures from Germany's statistics office will show after it contracted by 0.5 per cent in the quarter to end June.

As a result, Germany will fulfil the technical definition of recession after clocking up two consecutive quarters of negative rates.

Berlin - Germany's lower house of parliament on Wednesday passed a controversial law granting sweeping powers to federal police in the fight against terrorism.

The legislation, which has to be approved by the upper house, allows investigators to conduct video surveillance of terrorist suspects and monitor their private computers.

"We are responding to new technical developments while at the same time adhering to our basic tenets of freedom," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told deputies.

German civil liberties groups have criticized the new law, saying it will lead to a Big Brother state where the privacy of Germans' homes is no longer sacrosanct.

Berlin  - German school pupils demonstrating in Berlin Wednesday damaged a Holocaust-related exhibition, officials at Humboldt University in the capital said.

About 1,000 young people - school attenders in Germany are sometimes 20 or even older - swarmed inside the main building of the university to "occupy" it, climbing onto ledges above its grand portico.

The university said, "parts of the main building were damaged in the rioting." It said the parts included panels of a display about Jewish businesses and how they struggled on under the Nazis.