Hundreds of thousands of VIP ticket-holders for the World Cup could be barred from stadia for not having their names on the tickets, media reports said on Monday. The German organising committee of the World Cup and Swiss agent ISE, hired by football’s world governing body Fifa to oversee commercial sales of tickets have insisted they are not responsible for the blunder.
The Wallabies under new coach John Connolly are working on expunging the bitter memories of the demolition of the Australian scrum by England at Twickenham last November. England’s domination at the scrum, where loosehead prop Andrew Sheridan was particularly impressive, was so complete that Australia tighthead Al Baxter was eventually sin-binned for repeat offences.
George Gregan, just two appearances away from becoming rugby’s most capped international player, on Monday restated his commitment to lead the Wallabies at next year’s World Cup in France. The 33-year-old scrum-half general goes into the domestic international season next month on 118 Test caps — just one behind England prop forward Jason Leonard’s record of 119 Tests.
Argentina’s buzzing Buenos Aires has turned into a top Latin American destination for homosexual tourists, as the capital gets its gay-friendly message out to lure fresh revenue. The recent designation of the city as Latin America’s first host of a homosexual football World Cup and an opening of a wine bar catering to gays are some of the latest effects of Buenos Aires’s rising star.
Education’s stormy petrel Jonathan Jansen almost left South Africa this year. In an interview with the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> recently, he explained his motives and articulated his deep concerns about the country’s education system.
Senior United States marine officers are under investigation for an alleged cover-up of a massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last November — an atrocity being described as ”worse than Abu Ghraib”. The marine corps commandant, General Michael Magee, has flown to Iraq to lecture his troops on the laws of war and was reported to be considering dismissing high-ranking officers.
Nineteen South African passport holders deported from the Democratic Republic of Congo for their alleged involvement in a coup plot arrived home on Sunday night. Their flight from Kinshasa landed at Johannesburg International airport just after 6.20pm.
Relief supplies and aid workers on Sunday poured into the earthquake-devastated areas of Java, Indonesia, as the death toll soared to more than 4Â 300 people. Hundreds of soldiers and Red Cross volunteers joined anxious residents combing through the rubble of the estimated 25Â 000 destroyed homes, but only a handful of survivors were discovered.
The real hotel manager behind the film Hotel Rwanda has warned that a genocide on the scale of the one that wiped out 900 000 Rwandans could happen in Darfur. ”The refugee camps in Chad are just like those in which exiled Rwandans were living in 1993, without food, shelter or education,” said Paul Rusesabagina.
Children visit the big barn in Suffolk to buy beautifully crafted rabbit hutches and bird tables. Their parents pick up pet food or bales of hay. But in a dark warehouse behind the farm shop more deadly equipment is being built: David Lucas, on the surface an ordinary farmer, makes and exports gallows to countries in Africa and the Middle East.