Berlin - As a trainload of nuclear waste crossed Germany Sunday, riot police drew batons to push back demonstrators who tried to block a railway line.

On Saturday, the train had been delayed for more than 11 hours by three militants who chained themselves to a track near the French border. Police had to carefully dismantle a lump of concrete buried under the track to detach the trio.

Protesters later tried to occupy another railway line, 500 kilometres to the north, where the train was expected to arrive on Monday. The remains of nuclear fuel rods are bound for a German nuclear waste warehouse.

Hamburg - Former Germany striker Kevin Kuranyi is hoping that he will be given another chance to return to the national team.

The Schalke 04 player was kicked out of the German team by coach Joachim Loew last month after leaving the stadium at half time without permission during a World Cup qualifier against Russia for which he had not been nominated as a substitute.

Kuranyi is quoted in Welt am Sonntag as having said that he is hoping for another chance. "I hope that I have not closed all doors because of one mistake. Some time in the future it will be my goal again to play for Germany. But at the moment everything is fine the way it is."

Bochum, Germany - Werder Bremen's sporting director Klaus Allofs has said that Italian Serie A club Juventus has not made an offer for the Bundesliga club's Brazilian midfielder Diego.

Dortmund, Germany - Twenty-first century office workers are so preoccupied with their e-mail accounts that do not have enough time for their actual job, according to Germany's Federal Institute for

Berlin  - Multi-functional devices are the Swiss army knives of the peripherals world. They can print, copy and scan all in one package. There are downsides, though. If one function breaks, the whole device has to be brought in for repairs. The devices won't win prizes based on their prowess in the individual disciplines, either -their value is as a package.

Potential buyers should decide beforehand how they intend using the device.

Mainz, Germany  - Spam is losing none of its annoyance and is becoming even more dangerous, according to analysts at Sophos - a German security software firm.

During the third quarter, one out of every 416 e-mails contained a potentially dangerous attachment compared with one in every 3,333 e-mails in the second quarter, Sophos said.

The increase can be linked to a large series of malware-spam attacks over the summer. Fake mails were doctored to appear as if they were coming from delivery company UPS and designed to steal money or online identities. All the bigger attacks targeted computers running Windows.