Kassel, Germany (dpa) - German police shot and killed one of two escaped circus bears Sunday in the central city of Kassel.

Police said the animal had bitten the leg of an officer who was trying to catch it.

Circus owner Daniel Renz voiced outrage: "Both these animals were 25 years old and had been circus bears all their lives. They were never aggressive. I could have led the bear away by its ear. That is what I did when I took the second bear back to its cage."

Hamburg  - Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath is still picking Bayern Munich to retain the German league title but it's getting harder for him to suppress a smile.

With just six games remaining, Wolfsburg stay three points ahead of Bayern and have a superior goal difference.

Magath's insistence his team are still only targeting a top-five place is looking increasingly questionable.

"Ten per cent," was how Magath rated his team's chances of winning the Bundesliga in an interview with DSF television on Sunday.

Hamburg  - Many USB charging devices are actually a genuine threat to the user's safety, a recent study by the Hamburg-based Computer Bild magazine found.

The magazine tested 30 charging devices, primarily for use with MP3 players with a USB port. Nine of the models had significant safety issues, the test showed. A high-voltage test even sent sparks flying in five of the devices.

Hamburg  - When Jens Kuerpick looks at photos from old, school outings, he can't help but grin. Not because he and his old buddies were just kids back then, "but because they all have red eyes in the photos," the Dusseldorf university student says.

Those flaws can now be fixed using a computer. Yet digital photo editing is also increasingly being used for artistic aspects. Practical solutions can come through special programs on the internet.

Bonn  - For years now retailers have been selling more notebooks than PCs and thanks to the success of ultra-portable net books, more people than ever before are carrying their computers - and their valuable data - around with them the whole time.

Needless to say, this increases the risk of data being skimmed, stolen or of it simply falling into the wrong hands. Fortunately, confidential information on portable computers can be reliably secured using state-of-the-art encryption techniques or biometric authentication.

Bonn  - The computer virus, Conficker, continues to pose a threat, according to the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) in Bonn.

The experts say the C and D variants of the computer virus continuing to exploit a vulnerability in Windows, including an upgrade of its activities to now include the downloading of updates. Conficker used peer-to-peer functionality to exchange data directly with other internet-accessible PCs.