A peaceful World Cup discussion on a Berlin bus turned into a dispute, resulting in a bus wreck after a disputing passenger struck the driver's head with a bottle.

Police say the dispute was based on the divergent views of the passenger and the driver over the reason for Germany's elimination by Italy in the current World Cup tournament.

An argument over Germany's loss to Italy in the World Cup on Wednesday, led to a bus driver crashing into a parked car.

Police officers disclosed that the bus driver and one passenger were the only ones on the bus during the accident.

Hunters in the Bavarian Alps shot dead a brown bear, nicknamed Bruno, after spending weeks trying to find it.

German authorities had previously declared the bear could be shot dead as it posed a danger to humans.

Defying the odds, British Prime Minister Tony Blair boarded a low cost flight to London after his one week vacation in Italy.

Blair and his aides traveled by Ryanair, a modest commercial air transporter. Blair's low-budget travel decision comes after an outburst of criticisms from the British media over his preference for costly state flights during his private vacation trips.

Bananas, the world's most popular fruit and the fourth most important food crop, is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed.

Virtually all bananas traded internationally are of a single variety, the Cavendish, the genetic roots of which lie in India. According to New Scientist, for years, the world Cavendish crop has been threatened by pandemics of diseases such as that caused by the black sigatoka fungus. The main hope for survival of the Cavendish lies in developing new hybrids resistant to the fungus, but this is a difficult and time-consuming task because the seedless modern fruit does not reproduce sexually and has to be bred from cuttings.