Cologne, Germany - Three people were still missing on Tuesday evening several hours after the western German city of Cologne's historical archives and two neighbouring buildings collapsed in what one witness compared to a 9/ll scene.

Earlier, police had spoken of nine missing, but in the meantime six persons had been located elsewhere. A police spokeswoman said sniffer dogs were still being used to search the rubble for those still missing.

But there were fears about their survival chances beneath the rubble.

Cologne, Germany  - Nine people were missing Tuesday after historical archives and two neighbouring buildings collapsed in the west German city of Cologne.

A spokesman for the city fire brigade said that a search of the rubble was underway to try to find the missing people with officials saying it was unclear how many injured there are likely to be.

"The complete area was shrouded in a dark mist, just like September 11," said Paraskevi Oustampasiadi, whose newspaper stand is near the collapsed buildings.

Berlin  - The German navy detained nine people Tuesday following a dramatic action to head off a pirate attack on a German merchant vessel off the coast of Somalia.

A tricky deliberation process has started in Germany, which has to decide how to legally proceed with the pirates.

This is the first time in the history of modern Germany's navy that anyone has been apprehended at sea.

Budapest  - Several thousand mourners gathered in a Hungarian village on Tuesday for the funeral of a Roma father and son who were gunned down the previous week as they fled their burning home.

Csorba Csaba, 27, and his five-year-old son were shot with hunting rifles before dawn on Monday, February 23. It is suspected that the family home in Tatarszentgyorgy, 40 kilometres south-east of the capital Budapest, was first set ablaze with petrol bombs.

Although the motive for and precise details of the attack have not been proven, it is widely assumed to have been racially motivated and the case has become a symbol of rising racial tension surrounding Hungary's Roma minority.

Vienna  - An Austrian court on Tuesday found German state premier Dieter Althaus guilty of manslaughter by negligence and sentenced him to a fine of 33,300 euros
(41,900 dollars) on Tuesday for his involvement in a fatal skiing accident in Austria.

In addition, the court in Irdning ordered the premier of Thuringia to pay a fine of 5,000 euros in compensation to the husband of Beata Christandl, who died on January 1 after colliding with Althaus on a slope in the Austrian province of Styria.

Oslo  - Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu has asked to be removed from a list of nominees for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, reports said Tuesday.

In a letter to the five-member Nobel Committee, the former nuclear technician who was jailed for leaking details of Israel's nuclear programme to a British newspaper in
1986, said he wanted to be removed from the list of candidates.