Munich - Bayern Munich striker Lukas Podolski will not travel with the team to Borussia Moenchengladbach on Saturday but will join up with the Germany squad to face England on Wednesday.

Podolski has not recovered in time from a back injury and will instead put in an extra training session in Munich, coach Juergen Klinsmann said Friday.

Podolski will join the Germany squad on Sunday, and national team coach Joachim Loew "will decide in what shape he is in to play against England" in Berlin on Wednesday, Klinsmann said.

Munich - The alleged kingpin of the main Russian organized-crime family in Germany's Bavaria state went on trial Friday.

Lawyers for the alleged mobsters showered the court with motions to stop the trial. Security at the Munich courthouse was strict.

The defendant, 39, was indicted with running a criminal organization.

Two alleged mafia lieutenants, aged 31 and 30, are accused of being members of the crime syndicate, which allegedly ran protection rackets, trafficked drugs and spread counterfeit money in the prosperous state starting in 2001.

Munich - Massive restructuring costs and efforts to root out corruption combined to drive German engineering giant Siemens into the red during the final quarter of the 2007-08 business year.

The company posted a net loss of 2.4 billion euros (3 billion dollars), a sharp fall from a year ago when the loss was 74 million euros, Siemens said Thursday.

Munich - Siemens posted a 2.4-billion-euro (3 billion dollars) final quarter loss, mainly as a result of restructuring costs and efforts to root out corruption, the German engineering giant said Thursday.

In the corresponding quarter of the previous business year, the company reported a loss of 74 million euros.

Turnover in the three months up to the end of September in the 2007-2008 business year increased 7 per cent to 21.7 billion euros, while orders were up 4 per cent at 22.2 billion euros, Siemens said.

Munich - Germany's HVB banking group said Wednesday it posted a loss of 285 million euros (356 million dollars) in the third quarter as a result of the global financial market turmoil.

This compared to a profit of 83 million euros in the same quarter of the previous year for the Munich-based bank, which is the German offshoot of Italy's Unicredit.

A trading loss of 490 million euros coupled with increased outlays to boost credit risk provisions, were major factors in the bank's 2008 third quarter performance, the company said.

HBV shares slumped 8.2 per cent to 3.60 euros after the figures were released.

Munich - Hypo Real Estate, the German finance company which nearly collapsed in September, reported a third quarter pre-tax loss of 3.1 billion euros (3.8 billion dollars) on Wednesday.

The deficit, which was greater than analysts expected, was due mainly to 2.5 billion euros in writedowns for its Dublin-based subsidiary Depfa, the company said in a statement.

The loss came after a profit of 237 million euros for the same period of 2007.