Bonn - "Clean your plate" might be a well-intentioned command, but it is harmful to many children.

It's much more important that children learn flexible control of their eating habits and maintain a healthy sense of when they are hungry and when they are full, according to Germany's consumer information service in Bonn.

For these reasons parents should tell their children, "Take only as much as you would like to eat." This rule is especially important when food is plentiful and the prevailing lifestyle is short on activity.

We all know that hair play an extremely important part in shaping our personality and physical appearance.

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.

Munich - Try using vegetable leaves and the hulls of fruits instead of plates and bowls to give your next party an organic touch.

The firm leaves of a savoy cabbage can replace a small bowl, said an article in a German women's magazine published in Munich. The leaves separate easily from the stalk and are an ideal substitute for antipasto plates.

Sydney - The wine snobs who said Australians would never forsake bottles with corks for screw-topped ones have been proved wrong.

More than 70 per cent of this year's vintage will go on sale in bottles with metal caps. In fact, corks are now most prevalent in the cheap end of the market rather than in top-shelf wines.

To blunt the shift to metal, Portugal's Amorim has gone on the offensive, saying corks are the more environmentally sound solution because screw tops require four times more greenhouse gases to produce than corks do.

The world's largest producer of corks has a million-dollar advertising campaign running that tugs at the heartstrings of Australian drinkers.

Berlin - A cell phone's ringtone can be just about anything. It can imitate the ring of an old-fashioned telephone, reproduce a snappy 1980s pop song or even sound like a frog ribbeting.

But in particular social situations it's best to play it safe when setting the ringtone. While out with a group of friends or business associates, a straight-forward ringtone or a silent vibration are stylistically the most elegant choices. It could put others off, if the ringtone sounds like a toilet flushing.