Hamburg  - Fans of online role-playing games will have even more worlds to explore this autumn when game publishers release expanded versions the most popular titles.

World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and Everquest are all set to release expansion packs this autumn. The Chronicles of Spellborn marks the introduction of at least one brand new online world. And for players who want to stay offline, there will be an apocalyptic world to explore in Fallout 3. If you just want to race a car, there's Need for Speed - Undercover.

Woerth  - Police early Sunday ended an 11-hour protest blockade that held up a tightly-guarded rail convoy of spent nuclear fuel, freeing the train to enter Germany on its way to a waste dump.

The waste train had been waiting nearby at Lauterbourg, France.

A spokesman for German police said officers had been able to remove the last of three demonstrators who had chained themselves to the tracks by embedding their arms into a huge lump of concrete under the track.

Earlier, police had managed to drill away enough of the concrete to detach one protester's bonds at the small border town of Berg. Police said they had to be careful not to harm the protesters.

Berlin - Separating three protesters from a German railtrack was slow work Saturday for a team of police after the anti-nuclear activists used an ingenious method to lock themselves in place.

During the morning, the two men and a woman fixed their hands and arms inside tubes inside a huge lump of concrete under the track, according to fellow protesters.

A trainload of nuclear waste was unable to pass along the line. Obstructing tracks is one way the anti-nuclear movement shows its opposition to the transport of waste.

Abuja - Decrying a return to fighting in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, German President Horst Koehler Saturday urged all African nations to put an end to their disputes.

"This must have an end," said Koehler, speaking at the German- sponsored fourth Africa Forum in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. He said the news from DR Congo was "particularly disappointing."

As the forum met, the leaders of DR Congo and Rwanda were at a meeting in Kenya to try to negotiate an end to the fighting in eastern DR Congo.

Berlin - Five past winners of the Nobel Economics Prize generally favour an increase in regulation of financial markets, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

The magazine said it asked them for comment before key world leaders hold a G20 meeting on the crisis in Washington.

Those asked for a recipe were four US academics, Joseph E Stiglitz, Paul A Samuelson, Edmund S Phelps and Robert E Lucas and one German, Reinhard Selten.

Lucas was quoted saying the best solution would be a competitive banking system where deposits were guaranteed by the state.

Berlin - Thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators were trying Saturday to obstruct a tightly guarded convoy of spent nuclear fuel on its way to a German waste dump.

Near the warehouse in Gorleben in the northern German countryside where many tons of radioactive waste are stored, some 14,500 demonstrators attended a protest rally accompanied by bands, police said.