Diego Maradona threw a wild punch and some insults at a crush of local television reporters on Wednesday, who crowded him as he left a courthouse following an arbitration hearing with his former manager. Maradona and Guillermo Coppola, who have been enmeshed in a legal dispute over past business dealings, were summoned to appear at a hearing.
The Olympic torch, a magnet for anti-China protests, cruised smoothly under heavy guard through Buenos Aires on Friday with nothing more serious than a couple of tossed water balloons threatening the flame. ”We’re really happy to have pulled it off,” a relieved Francisco Irrarrazabal, the city’s deputy sports secretary, said.
Argentine police mobilised on Friday to guard the Olympic torch through Buenos Aires, bracing for protests against the human rights record of Olympic Games host China. The torch arrived in Argentina on Thursday to little fanfare. It will be carried past the country’s pink presidential palace and along the city’s broad avenues.
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/ 8 February 2008
On the shores of lake Nahuel Huapi, in the wild mountains of Argentina’s Patagonia, live some of the world’s most ancient trees. Known in Spanish as the alerce, the Patagonian cypress grows extremely slowly, but can reach heights over 50m and live for 2 000 years or more.
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/ 4 February 2008
Tango impresario Juan Fabbri can’t get a table at the 500-seat dinner theatre he runs. That’s because Esquina Carlos Gardel in Buenos Aires is packed with tourists every night. Fabbri’s clients pay to each to slice into steaks while watching a movie about the 19th century roots of tango, Argentina’s signature melancholy music and dance.
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/ 29 December 2007
Former Argentina captain Agustin Pichot slammed his federation chiefs on Friday declaring that the domestic scene was a disgrace. The 33-year-old scrumhalf told Argentine daily La Nacion he could not believe the manner in which the federation chiefs were dealing with the question over making the domestic game professional.
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/ 11 December 2007
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner took office as Argentina’s first elected female president on Monday in a rare husband-to-wife handover Argentines hope will sustain an historic economic boom. Fernandez, a former first lady and senator, began a four-year term promising to continue the policies of her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner.
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/ 23 November 2007
More than 150 passengers and crew escaped unhurt after their cruise ship struck an iceberg in the Antarctic Ocean and started to sink, an Argentine coast-guard official and a spokesperson for the ship’s owner said on Friday. ”Everyone is safe and accounted for,” Susan Hayes, a spokesperson for ship owner Gap Adventures, told CNN.
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/ 23 November 2007
The Soweto derby, between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs, has captured the imagination of football lovers since 1970. The fixture has become the showstopper of the South African football calendar. This weekend’s match in Durban will export the passions of South African fans to Europe and those parts of Africa where it will be televised live.
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/ 5 November 2007
A fire set by inmates swept through a prison in a north-eastern Argentine city, killing at least 29 people, authorities said on Monday. Many of the deaths were caused by asphyxiation as inmates were overcome by smoke, said Ricardo Daives, Justice Minister for the Santiago del Estero province.
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/ 31 October 2007
Canadian lobster and tuna fisherman Everett Condon had never travelled further south than the United States until this year, when he spent his off-season going to tango shows and getting plastic surgery in Argentina. Like thousands of others, mostly from the United States, Europe and Canada, Condon was drawn to South America’s attractive exchange rates and reputable doctors who are highly skilled due to a local rage for cosmetic surgery.
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/ 30 October 2007
It wasn’t that long ago that the air in Buenos Aires was heavy with anguish prompted by a collapsing national economy. Now it seems the breeze is filled with the tunes of tango and men’s cologne. The Argentinian capital is riding high on a tourist boom — one that relies in part on two new kinds of visitors: tango students and gay people.
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/ 29 October 2007
Argentine First Lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner rode an economic boom and her husband’s popularity to victory in a presidential election on Sunday to become the country’s first elected woman leader. Fernandez, a glamorous lawyer and centre-left senator, will take over from President Nestor Kirchner in December.
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/ 27 October 2007
Argentina holds a presidential election on Sunday that is expected to see first lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner take over from President Nestor Kirchner. Fernandez has been widely compared to Hillary Clinton, a former first lady who is seeking the United States presidency.
One man was killed and 14 others injured as rival soccer fans swinging metal pipes and throwing rocks clashed on Monday after a promotional play-off match between two Argentine clubs that spilled out on to a busy rush-hour freeway, authorities said.
Argentina’s 16-0 win over Ireland at Velez Sarsfield completed a two-Test rugby sweep and its biggest winning margin over the Europeans on Saturday. Flyhalf Federico Todeschini notched three out of four penalty kicks and converted the 79th-minute try by inside centre Manuel Contepomi.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter knew that his decision not to allow international games above altitude of 2 500m would have a serious effect on South American football. ”I know that this will not be well taken in South America,” he said on Sunday, even as he announced the plan in Zurich.
Diego Maradona said he has kicked his alcoholism and plans to return to playing friendly matches. Maradona was noticeably thinner than before when he appeared on a popular Argentine television programme that ended in the early hours of Tuesday.
Foreign tourists venture off luxury cruise ships to pick at the succulent flesh of king crabs. Nearby, rag-tag children watch from squatters’ camps. Drawn to the blue-ice glaciers and penguins of the Antarctic and a cheaper peso since Argentina devalued its currency in 2002, visitors come in droves to Ushuaia, billed as the world’s southern-most city.
Diego Maradona has recovered enough from a relapse of hepatitis to possibly allow him to continue his treatment for alcohol abuse at home, doctors for the football great said on Tuesday. ”Mr Diego Maradona continues to improve after his stay in the clinic, with laboratory work showing clear improvement,” said a statement released by the private Los Arcos clinic.
Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona returned to the hospital with abdominal pain on Friday, 48 hours after being released from two weeks of treatment for alcoholic hepatitis, his doctor said. Maradona (46) was not in danger but may have a recurrence of hepatitis, Dr Alfredo Cahe told radio and television.
Argentine football legend Diego Maradona checked out of a private hospital in the early morning hours of Wednesday after 13 days of treatment for alcohol abuse, medical officials said in a statement. The former Argentina captain and Barcelona and Napoli star (46) was discharged a few minutes after midnight accompanied by family members.
Argentina brushed away British diplomatic overtures and accused London of ”arrogance” as the two countries on Monday marked the outbreak of their war over the Falkland Islands 25 years ago. ”What they want to do is not what [Tony Blair] called a commemoration, but a triumphant military parade, a typical gesture of arrogance,” Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said.
Diego Maradona is expected to remain hospitalised for more than a week while doctors treat health problems ascribed to excess alcohol consumption, overeating and smoking. Routine tests detected some ”alterations” affecting Maradona’s liver, his personal physician Alfredo Cahe said on Saturday.
Argentine soccer hero Diego Maradona was taken by ambulance to a Buenos Aires clinic late on Wednesday after suffering an unspecified ”imbalance” in his health, the clinic said in a statement. Maradona (47) was taken to the Guemes Health Clinic in the Argentine capital and was followed few minutes later by his two daughters, Dalma and Giannina.
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/ 29 November 2006
The United States Embassy in Argentina rejected reports that it had told President George Bush’s twin daughters to leave the country after a widely publicised purse-snatching incident. ABC News reported that embassy officials had ”strongly suggested” that the twins cut short their visit to due to security concerns.
Alan Garcia first became president of Peru in 1985. Within five years he had steered the South American country in the worst crisis in its history. Then the man known as the ”Kennedy of South America” disappeared into the political sunset, never to return — or so it seemed.
Wildlife wardens and volunteers are working round the clock cleaning hundreds of oil-covered penguins found over the past days in a remote southern nature reserve, officials said. At least 70 of the penguins have died, said Jorge Perancho, the coordinator of protected areas of the far southern province of Santa Cruz.
It is a measure of Diego Maradona’s genius that the scandals which dogged his career will not stop him from being remembered as one of the two greatest footballers to grace the sport. Like Pele, Maradona etched his name among the legends of the game on the most demanding stage of all, the World Cup.
Scientists have discovered the remains of seven carnivorous dinosaurs that travelled in packs throughout an area of southern Argentina nicknamed Jurassic Park, one of the palaeontologists said on Tuesday. ”This is a new type of carnivorous dinosaur, known as the Mapusaurus, that lived some 90-million years ago, said Argentine palaeontologist Rodolfo Coria.
Every night in Buenos Aires is tango night. Throughout the city milongas — the word for any place that tango is danced — proliferate. There are tourist-trap milongas, traditional milongas, modern milongas. There is even a seniors’ milonga, where couples trickle round the room with a grace that is a million miles from Strictly Come Dancing pyrotechnics.
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/ 19 December 2005
National team goalie Roberto Abbondanzieri caught two penalty kicks and converted one for Boca Juniors, that beat Mexico’s Pumas 4-3 in a penalty shootout on Sunday to win the Sudamericana continental soccer tournament, its third cup this year.