Munich - Veteran coach Jupp Heynckes was set to take over at Bayern Munich on Tuesday in a caretaker role after the sacking of Juergen Klinsmann. Heynckes, 63, will be in charge of his first training session after a formal presentation at the club's grounds in Munich.

Former German international Heynckes, who was Bayern coach between 1987 and 1991, is in charge for just four weeks - the last five games of the season.

Dusseldorf - One of the four men accused of a major Islamist terrorist plot in Germany was thrown out of court Tuesday for disturbing the courtroom proceedings with interjections. "I want to go back to my cell," Adem Yilmaz, 30, a Turkish citizen raised in Germany, called out at the start of the day's proceedings. He was duly ordered out of the courtroom. Yilmaz hugged his co- accused on the way out.

Frankfurt - Giant German carmaker Daimler AG said Tuesday it posted a 1.3-billion-euro (1.7-billion-dollar) first-quarter loss amid the global car industry crisis. The announcement came just one day after Daimler announced it was offloading its stake in the ailing US auto group Chrysler.

Daimler, which manufactures luxury Mercedes-Benz vehicles, said Monday it had forged an agreement with Chrysler's owner, the US private equity group Cerberus Capital Management and the US Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp, to pull out of its 19.9-per-cent stake in the North American carmaker.

Frankfurt - De

Kassel, Germany  - Practically all the half million raccoons which infest the forests and parks of Central Europe are believed to descend from just four animals released in the woods near the German city of Kassel in the Nazi period.

Raccoons have never had a good press in Europe. Not only are they North American interlopers, there is also a persistent story that they were introduced to provide hunting pleasure for Marshal Hermann Goering, the head of Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe.

Dusseldorf - A man charged with leading the banned Kurdish Workers' Party or PKK in Germany rejected the indictment Monday as a "misunderstanding" and told the court he was a political refugee whose relations had been massacred by a Turkish mob in 1978. German prosecutors told the court he was the leader code-named Colak who ran the secretive Marxist group on German soil till April 2008. The PKK has been outlawed in Germany as a criminal gang because of its violence against renegade former members.