Berlin, Nov 14 : The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus.

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by the US- UK-Dutch Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS).

Frankfurt (Germany ) Nov. 14 : Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh will leave today for Washington after spending the night in Frankfurt, where he was received by a German protocol officer and Indian embassy officials.

Berlin  - When Gerson Liebl arrived from the West African state of Togo to press his claim for German citizenship, little did he realize he would still be battling bureaucracy 17 years later.

He was, after all, grandson of the late Dr Friedrich Karl Georg Liebl, a noted specialist in tropical diseases who before World War I was employed at the Nightingale Hospital in Lome, Togo.

Berlin  - The German government threw down a gauntlet Thursday to both luxury carmaker Porsche and the European Commission, with Parliament in Berlin passing new legislation to cement state rights over Volkswagen.

Porsche has announced it will own just under 75 per cent of the giant car manufacturer when options fall due next year. A German state, Lower Saxony, owns just over 20 per cent of Volkswagen.

Cairo - Fire trucks rushed to one of the Egyptian capital's main squares on Thursday, only to find a crowd of curiosity seekers gawking at a man hanging from a wall by one bare hand.

German street performer Johan Lorbeer was putting on a display at the entrance of the Goethe Institute in central Cairo as part of an open day organized by the German cultural centre.

The arrival of the fire trucks sent a ripple of fright through the crowd.

Dusseldorf - One of the main business backers of the Nord Stream gas pipeline to be built under the Baltic Sea, the giant German chemicals company BASF, affirmed the plan Thursday after seeming doubts in Russia.

"My most recent talks with Alexei Miller, the chief of Gazprom, confirmed that all the parties are working with firm resolve ... to create the Nord Stream pipeline in the time frame," BASF chief executive Juergen Hambrecht said.

His response was released by the German business daily Handelsblatt a day in advance of publication.