A young German entrepreneur won a legal battle Thursday against Internet behemoth Google on the use of its "Gmail" brand for free electronic mail service.

The regional court in the northern city of Hamburg ruled that Google may not use the name in Germany, upholding 33-year-old businessman Daniel Giersch's claim to have a copyright on the name for an e-mail service he has been developing for seven years.

Giersch says he has used the name "G-Mail" since 2000, four years before the US giant launched its "Gmail" product.

Eble said Google had subjected his client to a costly three-year legal marathon that is still ongoing because the company has suits pending against him in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland.

Giersch denied speculation he was trying to extort a princely sum from the company for the brand name.

"Neither G-Mail nor I can be bought," Giersch said in a statement.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment

The Moscow Arbitration Court heard opening arguments today regarding the Russian Federation's $22.5 billion claim against The Bank of New York, Inc., now the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation , for money laundering activities the Bank had previously admitted.

"We believe it is offensive and an arrogant slap in the face to the judge, the court and The Russian Federation that the Bank of New York would fail to show to a hearing they were well aware of," said Maxim Smal, a Moscow-based attorney representing Russia's Federal Customs Service.

"We feel confident in the validity and strength of Russia's claim as well as our prospective to prevail in court with or without the defendant," he said. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, July 10 at noon in Moscow.

"The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled last week, consistent with prior precedent, that the Russian judicial system is legitimate and honest such that any award in Russia should be fully collectible in the U.S. where the Bank of New York does business. Therefore, the Federation remains confident not only as to receiving a successful outcome, but also with obtaining complete satisfaction of the damages sought, especially now that the merger has created a company capable of satisfying any judgment awarded," said Smal.

On May 17, the Federal Customs Service for the Russian Federation filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court against the Bank of New York, the world's second-largest custodian of investor assets.

The lawsuit stems from a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice investigation that ended with a non-prosecution agreement forcing the Bank to pay $38 million to the U.S. government to settle two criminal probes and admitting it failed to report $7.5 billion in illegal Russian transactions.

Federal investigators determined several accounts that existed at the Bank were part of an illegal network that allowed Russian businesses to defraud their government of customs duties and tax revenues by transferring funds in and out of Russia in violation of currency controls.

Although the suit is being heard in a Russian court, it will be tried in accordance with U.S. law. Under accepted and clear legal principles, the Bank of New York has already made signed admissions to its criminal responsibility and its officers have been criminally convicted.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the issue and agreed that both sides would continue talks 'with a view toward early results,' a joint statement said.

The new push came from Presidents George W Bush and Vladimir Putin, who held two days of talks ending Monday at the Bush family estate in Maine.

Both sides want to reduce strategic nuclear arsenals 'to the lowest possible level consistent with their national security requirements and alliance commitments,' the statement said.

The START pact, negotiated by the US and the Soviet Union but formally in force since 1994, limits the United States and Russia to 6,000 deployed nuclear warheads. It also scrapped Soviet-era nuclear arsenals in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine.

Joseph cited confidence-building and 'transparency,' such as data exchanges and site visits, as issues for the post-START talks.

Meanwhile, Moscow views the effort as 'a continuing process of nuclear reduction,' Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Kislyak told a joint news conference in Washington.

Separately, Bush and Putin agreed to boost US-Russian cooperation in promoting civilian nuclear power, especially in poorer countries, while avoiding the spread of nuclear materials and weapons.

One part of the effort is for both countries to provide nuclear fuel services, including international nuclear fuel cycle centres that enrich uranium under safeguards of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the two leaders said in a joint statement.

'This expansion of nuclear energy should be conducted in a way that strengthens the nuclear nonproliferation regime,' they said.

Three men have admitted using the internet to urge Muslims to wage holy war on non-believers, police said, in what is believed to the first prosecution of its kind in Britain.

Tariq Al-Daour, Younes Tsouli and Waseem Mughal had close links with Al-Qaeda in Iraq and thought there was a 'global conspiracy' to wipe out Islam, London's Woolwich Crown Court was told.

UAE-born Al-Daour, 21, admitted a charge of 'inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the UK which would, if committed in England and Wales, constitute murder'.

Moroccan-born Tsouli, 23, and British-born Mughal, 24, admitted the same charge on Monday.

The guilty pleas came two months into their trial.

Al-Daour and Tsouli, who lived in west London, and Mughal, from Kent, in southeast England, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud banks, credit card and charge card companies.

The trial was told the computer experts spent at least 12 months trying to encourage people to follow the extreme ideology of Osama bin Laden using email and radical websites.

Films of hostages and beheadings were found among their possessions, including footage of British contractor Ken Bigley, who was killed in Iraq in 2004; and US journalist Daniel Pearl, killed in Pakistan in 2002.

CDs containing instructions for making explosives and poisons were also found, with other documents giving advice on how to use a rocket-propelled grenade and how to make booby traps and a suicide vest.

Police also discovered online conversations in which Al-Dour talked of sponsoring terrorist attacks, becoming 'the new Osama' and justifying suicide bombings.

Apart from Kim, the Chinese Foreign Minister also held a bilateral meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Pak Ui Chun, and met with Premier Kim Yong Il.

During the meetings, Yang reiterated Beijing's commitment to the six-party talks mechanism and supported the efforts for the implementation of the February 13 joint declaration on Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang said.

The six-party talks involve the United States, North Korea, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

China was communicating and consulting closely with the other parties on the next steps in the talks, he said when asked for fresh dates for the next round of six-way talks, hosted by China.

North Korea last week announced the dispute with the United States over USD 25 million frozen in Macao's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) has been resolved, and vowed to start implementing the disarmament deal struck in Beijing on February 13.

Under the February deal, North Korea was supposed to shut down the Yongbyon reactor within 60 days in exchange for some 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.

The financial dispute between the United States and North Korea over the return of the frozen assets held up progress of the talks for months.

Four suspects were in police custody Sunday - and a fifth man was under guard in hospital - after a flaming Jeep crashed into a Scottish airport on Saturday and two car bomb plots were foiled in central London on Friday.

Police said Sunday's search was taking place in a residential area about seven miles west of central Glasgow, about a mile from the airport. The area around a two-story house in Houston, a small town just outside Glasgow, was cordoned off.

Scotland Yard said two people were arrested early Sunday on a major highway in Cheshire, northern England, in a joint swoop by specialist officers from London and Birmingham. Another person was arrested overnight in Liverpool, police said.

Police offered no further details on those arrested.

In Scotland, officers arrested two men - one of them badly burned - after a Jeep Cherokee rammed into Glasgow airport and burst into flames. The green SUV shattered glass doors at the terminal entrance, stopping within yard of where passengers were lined up at check-in counters.

Police and security officials said the attacks were clearly linked, adding all three vehicles carried large amounts of flammable materials - including gasoline and gas cylinders. The chaos over the past two days has raised fears that the type of car bomb attack that have become commonplace in Iraq has now reached European shores.

Britain on Saturday raised its terror alert to "critical" - the highest possible level - and the Bush administration announced plans to increase security at airports and on mass transit.

In an interview on British Broadcasting Corp. TV Sunday, Brown, who replaced Tony Blair as Britain's prime minister last week, said Britons face a "long-term and sustained" terrorist threat.

He said that Britain's message to the terrorists must be: "We will not yield, we will not be intimidated, and we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life."

Brown said it is "clear that we are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al-Qaida."

In a column in Sunday's News of the World newspaper, Lord Stevens, London's former police chief and Brown's new terrorism adviser, said: "This weekend's bomb attacks signal a major escalation in the war being waged on us by Islamic terrorists."

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan granted a motion by Sibir, now known as S7, to dismiss the complaint under a doctrine used when the choice of court is inconvenient, according to the ruling dated Thursday.

"In addition to the translation costs, plaintiffs, witnesses and counsel will have to travel to the United States, approximately 6,000 miles from Sibir's headquarters and the scene of the accident," Cote wrote.

But Cote conditioned the dismissal on Sibir's conceding liability if the plaintiffs sued it in Russia within six months and paying any damages determined by courts there. Sibir has already agreed to those terms, according to the ruling.

The lawsuit also named Airbus Leasing II, an affiliate of Airbus. Airbus Leasing owned the aircraft and leased it to Sibir. The judge ordered the entire case to be closed.

Airbus Leasing's lawyer, Thad Dameris, declined to comment. The lawyers for the plaintiffs could not be reached immediately.