Munich - European broadcaster ProSiebenSat. 1, which owns a string of TV channels in Germany, Scandinavia and eastern Europe, is not putting them up for sale, a main owner said in a news interview published Tuesday.

Joerg Rockenhaeuser, who heads the German operations of private-equity investor Permira, dismissed suggestions that the TV company raise cash by selling channels.

"From the shareholder point of view, that wouldn't make any sense," he told the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Permira and another private-equity investor, KKR, control 88 per cent of Munich-based ProSiebenSat. 1, which in turn owns the Swedish-based group SBS. Earnings at ProSiebenSat. 1 have lagged amid high debt after the SBS takeover.

Munich - Programs like Outlook and Thunderbird are useful for sending and receiving e-mail messages. Another option is to sign up for an e-mail account with one of the many services on the internet. All correspondence can then be handled fully online. The same services often offer a pay-version alongside the cost-free ones, promising extra functionality in the process. Are the extra services worth the cost?

Munich - It may have sounded like science fiction 20 years ago, but it's now reality: computers listen to what you say.

Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 is the latest incarnation of Nuance's speech recognition software for PCs. And rival company Linguatec has announced the release date of the successor to Voice Pro 11 this autumn. That means that updated versions of the two key programs in voice recognition industry will be available in stores at the same time. But what are these programs really capable of, and who can benefit the most from them?

Munich - Revelations that Siemens turbine salesman paid kickbacks to Italian electricity company Enel triggered military concern in Germany four years ago, corporate sources said Saturday.

The bribery to secure orders from Enel was part of a 1.3 billion-euro (1.9-billion-dollar) web of corruption that has plunged the German conglomerate into legal tangles, but it was not previously known that it threatened Siemens' defence secrecy clearance.

Munich - As petrol prices soar, more and motorists are considering converting their cars to liquid petroleum gas (LPG).

But owners should check whether they actually clock up enough kilometres to make the high cost of the conversion worthwhile, said Germany's automobile association 
(ADAC).

A test of 50 popular car models showed that a motorist would on average have to travel 51,000 kilometres to make up for the

conversion cost of between 2,000 and 3,000 euros (2,940 to 4,410 dollars), the ADAC said.