Bonn, Germany  - A man sits on a train solving a crossword puzzle, a woman broods over a Sudoku grid while an ad for an electronic memory game flashes across a television screen. There is no shortage of ways to improve the brain's memory powers - after all, lots of people want to improve their mental abilities.

But are Sudoku, crosswords and other training games any good at improving memory? Are they really effective in training the mind or just a nice way of passing the time?

Bonn, Germany  - Microsoft has eliminated 23 vulnerabilities in its Windows and Office products. Users of those programs should install the corresponding security updates as soon as possible, the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn, central Germany, is advising.

This can be handled by activating automatic updates in the Windows Security Centre or visiting Microsoft's update site at http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate.

Bonn, Germany - Human rights issues are not adequately discussed in the European Union, former Czech president Vaclav Havel told reporters in Bonn Friday, just before he was handed a 10,000- euro (13,000-dollar) democracy prize.

Havel, 72, said public debate focussed too much on economic topics and not enough on rights and freedoms.

Bonn  - For years now retailers have been selling more notebooks than PCs and thanks to the success of ultra-portable net books, more people than ever before are carrying their computers - and their valuable data - around with them the whole time.

Needless to say, this increases the risk of data being skimmed, stolen or of it simply falling into the wrong hands. Fortunately, confidential information on portable computers can be reliably secured using state-of-the-art encryption techniques or biometric authentication.

Bonn  - The computer virus, Conficker, continues to pose a threat, according to the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn.

The experts say the C and D variants of the computer virus continuing to exploit a vulnerability in Windows, including an upgrade of its activities to now include the downloading of updates. Conficker used peer-to-peer functionality to exchange data directly with other internet-accessible PCs.

Bonn, Germany - German authorities fined two propane companies a total of 41.4 million euros (55 million dollars) Wednesday for price-fixing, saying they colluded to stop customers obtaining cheaper prices.

Westfalen AG and Propan Rheingas GmbH & Co KG supply two thirds of the German market for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the Federal Cartel Office in Bonn said. From 1997 until a raid in 2005, they had had a pact not to poach one another's customers.