Munich  - Throughout his trial, Helg Sgarbi presented the slick image which he had used to work his way into the hearts and wallets of wealthy female spa guests.

The 44-year-old was on Monday convicted and jailed for six years for extorting millions of euros from Germany's richest woman after seducing the married mother-of-three.

Immaculately dressed in a black suit with a white shirt, the Swiss citizen calmly faced a sea of camera flashes before addressing the court in Munich - and the women he had duped.

Munich - The deepening global recession has hit the world's leading luxury carmakers with Germany's BMW reporting Monday nearly a 25-per-cent slump in sales last month.

On Friday, rival Mercedes-Benz Cars posted a 28-per-cent drop in February sales to 63,600 vehicles as the crisis in the world auto industry gains ground.

Munich-based BMW, which is the world leading luxury carmaker, said global sales slumped 24.4 per cent in February.

Munich  - Persistent or recurring back pain in women may have gynaecological causes, according to the Munich-based German Association of Gynaecologists (BVF).

This is particularly true, it said, in cases of lower-back pain around the lumbar vertebrae and sacrum.

The pain sometimes extends to the groin and anterior abdominal wall. Women experiencing such symptoms should see a gynaecologist, the BVF advised.

Munich - Bayern Munich will be without striker Luca Toni and defender Philipp Lahm for Wednesday's German Cup quarter-final clash against Bayer Leverkusen, coach Juergen Klinsmann said Tuesday.

Italy striker Toni is still labouring under an Achilles tendon strain while Germany international Lahm has not fully recovered from a heavy cold. Both missed Sunday's 0-0 draw at Werder Bremen.

Munich - Shares in German insurance giant Munich Re slumped Tuesday, after the group abandoned its 2010 profit goal in the wake of a 76 per cent drop in fourth-quarter earnings.

The world's biggest reinsurer said earnings for the last three months of 2008 tumbled to 133 million euros (168 million dollars) compared to 552 million euros in the same period in 2007 as a round of turmoil hit financial markets.

This helped to result in the Munich-based company's full-year 2008 profit dropping by 61 per cent to 1.5 billion euros.

Munich, March 3 : Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) Very Large Telescope (VLT) to gain valuable new insights about the lower atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto.

The scientists found unexpectedly large amounts of methane in the atmosphere, and also discovered that the atmosphere is hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, although it still only reaches a frigid minus 180 degrees Celsius.

These properties of Pluto's atmosphere may be due to the presence of pure methane patches or of a methane-rich layer covering the dwarf planet's surface.