Munich, Dec 13: Astronomers have used the ESO’s (European Southern Observatory’s) Very Large Telescope, along with a double natural “magnifying glass” known as the “Einstein Cross”, to scrutinize the inner parts of the disc around a supermassive black hole 10 billion light years away.

The “Einstein Cross”, a famous cosmic mirage, is a cross-shaped configuration consisting of four images of a single very distant source.

The multiple images are a result of gravitational lensing by a foreground galaxy, an effect that was predicted by Albert Einstein as a consequence of his theory of general relativity.

Munich - An alleged gigolo who seduced Germany's richest woman, Susanne Klatten, 46, has been indicted for professional fraud, a court in Munich said Thursday.

Helg Sgarbi, 43, has been in pre-trial custody since January after Klatten, a brunette billionairess with a husband and three children, called police to say the Swiss man was trying to blackmail her with intimate videos.

News reports suggest Sgarbi, a former bank executive, was doing the will of an Italian religious guru, Ernano Barretta, 63, who is in custody in Italy on related charges.

Munich - Many car seats including headrests do not offer maximum protection against whiplash in the event of an accident, a test conducted by Germany's automobile association ADAC found.

In a rear collision test conducted on 25 car models, only five seats were described as "good" while eight were given a poor rating by the testers.

Munich - Bayern Munich Willy Sagnol faces the end of his football career over an Achilles tendon injury, the local tz daily reported on Tuesday.

Sagnol, 31, said that an operation scheduled for this week to ease the pain has been scrapped. Asked whether he has hope of returning to the pitch, he told the tz: "I don't know where to get it from."

The former France defender has not played since May and underwent surgery in August. He had initially hoped that another operation would put an end to his misery and allow him to return to the pitch.

Sagnol came to Munich in 2000 and has a contract until 2010.

Munich - If al-Qaeda terrorists sell their stories for money, the income should be seized to benefit victims' families, according to a petition sent to Germany's parliament.

The news magazine Focus said Saturday the petition was in the name of the 52 members of the German Alliance on Capital Crimes, which represents relatives of victims.

They lost loved ones in the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and other Islamist attacks in Djerba and Bali, as well as in a 1975 attack in Stockholm by the far-left German terrorist group, the Red Army Faction.