Wiesbaden, Germany - German federal police appealed to the public Thursday to help track down two missing Islamists, one of them a German convert, who were suspected of membership in a terrorist group.

Eric Breininger, a 21-year-old German, and Houssain al-Malla, a 23- year-old Lebanese, were last seen in the zone along the Pakistan- Afghan border. Police suspected they might have come back quietly into Germany.

The Federal Crime Office BKA showed photos of the two men on its web page listing the most wanted suspects in the country.

Wiesbaden, Germany  - The number of same-sex couples in Germany has nearly doubled in a decade to 68,000, according to census data from federal statisticians in Wiesbaden on Tuesday.

The 2007 tally of homosexual people living permanently together marked an increase of 30,000 from 11 years earlier.

The data was gathered in a micro-census, an annual survey of an exactly chosen sample of Germans.

Statisticians cautioned that the number might under-represent same-sex couples, since it was optional for households to answer the question and questionnaires were tallied even if they gave no data on the issue.

Wiesbaden, Germany - Cosmetic institutes and dermatologists have long been able to meet customers' demands for special beauty treatments.

They've been known to offer botox shots during the lunch hour and an assortment of laser treatments and peelings using cumbersome appliances.

Now, manufacturers are offering devices that could take over private bathrooms everywhere. Beauty tools such as the ultrasound skin buffer and the electric pimple killer are expected to find a place in bathrooms alongside creams and sprays.

Wiesbaden,

Wiesbaden, Germany  - German economic growth surged 1.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the final three months of last year, the Federal Statistics Office said Thursday.

Wiesbaden, Germany - The strong euro failed to dent Ge