Stuttgart- World champion Lewis Hamilton could start near the back of the grid at this Sunday's season-opening Australian Formula One Grand Prix, Mercedes motorsport director Norbert Haug has admitted.

"We have to reckon with starting in the last third on the grid but we will guarantee ourselves that we'll improve race by race and slowly return to the front," Haug said in an interview with German Press Agency dpa.

Stuttgart - Shares in giant German carmaker Daimler AG jumped more than 6 per cent Monday after the manufacturer of luxury Mercedes Benz autos sold a
9.1-per-cent stake to Aabar Investments.

Aabar Investments is a fund owned by the Arab emirate of Abu Dhabi.

As a result of the acquisition, Abu Dhabi, which is to pay 1.95 billion euros (2.6 billion dollars) for 96.4 million newly-issued shares, will replace Kuwait as Daimler's largest stakeholder. Kuwait still holds a 6.9-per cent-Daimler stake.

Stuttgart - Arne F

Stuttgart - An unemployed man was given a five-month suspended prison sentence on Wednesday for a massacre hoax on the same day a teenage gunman killed
15 in a shooting spree in Germany.

A court in Stuttgart found the 24-year-old guilty of disturbing public order by threatening to commit a crime.

The man wrote a fake news text about someone running amok at a vocational college in the south-west town of Waiblingen and posted it on an internet website.

Stuttgart - Germa

Stuttgart - Mercedes motorsport director Norbert Haug said Friday that part of the reason the German car giant is supplying the new Brawn GP Formula One team is to ensure the same number of cars compete in 2009 as last season.

Ex-Honda team principal Ross Brawn's management-led buy-out of his former team, which pulled out of the sport last December, was announced by Japan's second largest carmaker Friday in Tokyo.

The team has agreed a partnership with Mercedes for the supply of its 2.4 litre FO108W Formula One engines and is hopeful that its driver line-up of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello will be on the grid for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on March 29.