Sunday, June 25, 2006

Here we go, there we go ...

It has so far been a near-perfect success - with brilliant stadiums, a chilled-out atmosphere and a near-total absence of hooligans. The only thing the organisers of the World Cup appear to have got wrong is the number of toilets provided. Biologists have warned that trees in Berlin are in danger of dying because of male fans urinating in the bushes. The huge, leafy 'fan mile' in the centre of the city has regularly been attracting crowds of up to 700,000 who have gathered to drink beer, eat sausages and watch games on giant screens - but it only has 280 portable loos. 'The urea sinks into the ground as ammonia. In small quantities this is a good fertiliser, but too much acidity is bad for the soil and could damage or even kill the trees,' warns Tilman Lamparter, a biologist at Berlin's Free University.

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