A court in Germany has denied compensation to a Polish-born Jewish woman who was forced into slave labour during the Nazi era.

A court in Cologne overturned a previous ruling that said the woman Rywka Merin was entitled to compensation from the German government.

It also rejected the claim of twenty other Jewish former slave labourers.

The judge ruled that Germany's compensation law for the victims of Nazism did not include any provision for payments purely for slave labour.

The German authorities are in talks with German industry to set up a fund to compensate former slave workers.