The legendary formula one driver died at the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland on Monday night surrounded by his closest family members
Despite calls for a postponement and sponsors’ concerns about football’s image, Sepp Blatter won’t budge on the timing of Fifa’s presidential poll.
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/ 18 November 2010
Two Fifa executive committee members were banned and fined following an investigation into allegations they had offered to sell their vote.
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/ 13 January 2009
Manchester United and Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo was on Monday named Fifa World Footballer of the Year for 2008.
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/ 21 December 2008
Russia’s Nikolai Valuev successfully defended his WBA title on Saturday night with a win over former world champion Evander Holyfield.
UBS will cut 5 500 jobs in one the biggest purges seen so far in the financial markets crisis, as the Swiss wealth-management titan slashes at the investment bank that plunged it into turmoil. UBS also said it has a preliminary deal with United States asset manager BlackRock to sell a -billion portfolio of subprime mortgages.
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died aged 102, the organisation that republished his book on the mind-altering substance said. Hofmann died at his home in Basel, Switzerland on Tuesday, the California-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies said on its website.
UBS AG doubled its writedowns from the subprime crisis, parted company with its chairperson and asked shareholders for more emergency capital on Tuesday in a second dramatic attempt to reverse its fortunes. The Swiss bank wrote down an additional -billion on United States real estate and related assets, causing a net loss of 12-billion Swiss francs.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter showed his solidarity with the construction workers who are getting 10 stadiums in South Africa ready for the 2010 World Cup. Blatter met with leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Tuesday and said he wanted them to be treated fairly while building and upgrading World Cup venues.
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/ 18 February 2008
Société Générale, at the centre of a huge trading scandal, began investigating trades executed by Jerome Kerviel months before his activities were exposed in January, a media report said on Monday. A senior executive of Fimat began investigating at the end of September deals executed by Fimat employee Moussa Bakir for Kerviel.
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/ 11 February 2008
Paintings worth about -million were stolen from a Zurich museum in an armed robbery in the second dramatic art theft in the area within days, police said on Monday. Oil paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet were among those stolen in broad daylight on Sunday from the private Buehrle Collection in Zurich.
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/ 30 January 2008
Frequent power failures in South Africa won’t affect the 2010 Soccer World Cup, the man who is expected to be the country’s next president said on Tuesday. African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma met Fifa president Sepp Blatter after attending the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
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/ 30 October 2007
Brazil, the only bidding country, were named as the host nation of the 2014 Soccer World Cup finals by Fifa, world soccer’s governing body, on Tuesday. Brazil, who have won the World Cup a record five times and are the only country to have played in all 18 World Cup finals tournaments, last staged the event in 1950.
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/ 29 October 2007
Fifa’s executive committee has voted unanimously to end its policy of rotating the hosting of World Cups through its six continental confederations. Executive committee vice-president Chung Mong-joon told reporters on Monday that the rotation policy had been dropped with effect from the 2018 World Cup.
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/ 29 October 2007
Fifa’s executive committee is expected to drop its controversial Soccer World Cup rotation policy when it meets at the organisation’s headquarters in Zurich on Monday. World soccer’s governing body decided in 2000 that it would rotate its most prestigious tournament around its six continental confederations.
An amateur palaeontologist in Switzerland may have unearthed Europe’s largest dinosaur mass grave after he dug up the remains of two Plateosaurus. The dinosaurs’ bones came to light during house-building in the village of Frick, near the German border.
The Brazilian football association (CBF) formally submitted its plans for staging the 2014 World Cup on Tuesday but kept the details close to its chest. A Brazilian delegate, headed by CBF president Ricardo Teixeira, handed over a 900-page dossier at the headquarters of world soccer’s governing body.
Pele and Samuel Eto’o headed the list of international stars on Thursday when Fifa announced the line-ups for a match to honour Nelson Mandela’s 89th birthday. More than 50 players have confirmed their participation in the ”90 Minutes for Mandela” match on July 18 at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town.
The opening match and final of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa will take place at the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. Fifa’s executive committee said on Wednesday the decision was made on Tuesday by the bureau of the World Cup Organising Committee.
Assets held by the world’s richest people rose by 11,4% last year, a study showed, but a slowing world economy might put a brake on the lavish expansion rate in coming years. Soaring commodity prices and equity markets and rapidly expanding emerging economies caused the global pool of wealth to expand to ,2-trillion at the end of 2006.
Sepp Blatter was given a third term as president of world soccer’s governing body by acclamation after standing as the only candidate at Thursday’s Fifa congress. ”I accept this mandate and I thank you for your continuing trust in me,” he told delegates from Fifa’s 208 member associations who gave him a four-year term until 2011.
Fifa has banned international games from being played more than 2 500m above sea level. Fifa president Sepp Blatter said the decision was taken on Sunday after a review by the medical team for world soccer’s governing body. Blatter also reiterated his full support in South Africa’s ability to hold the 2010 World Cup.
A record 204 countries have entered the qualifying competition for the 2010 Soccer World Cup finals, Fifa said in a statement on Friday. The number beats the previous record of 199 teams that entered for the 2002 World Cup finals and only Bhutan, Brunei, Laos and the Philippines have not registered to take part.
World football’s governing body Fifa on Friday gave the thumbs up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, saying its doubts about security and logistics for the event have been dispelled. ”South Africa, we trust you,” Fifa President Sepp Blatter announced after a meeting of governing-body chiefs.
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/ 27 February 2007
Some people will do anything to get in the papers, but few have the audacity of a man in Switzerland, who conned one of the country’s biggest media companies into publishing a two-page advertisement he created of himself posing semi-naked beside a bottle of Gucci perfume.
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/ 19 December 2006
Fabio Cannavaro received recognition for his outstanding performance in leading Italy to World Cup glory on Monday when he was handed the Fifa World Player of the Year award to add to his European Footballer of the Year honour. The imperious Italy captain was a rock at the heart of a defence that leaked just two goals in seven matches.
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/ 7 December 2006
Fifa president Sepp Blatter said he was confident that South Africa would be ready to stage the World Cup in 2010 despite concerns over delays in the building of new stadiums. ”We need to bring a little bit of fire [to the organisers],” Blatter told a news conference following a two-day meeting of Fifa’s executive committee.
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/ 6 December 2006
World soccer governing body Fifa announced on Wednesday that the next World Cup will take place between June 11 and July 11 2010, and granted South Africa an automatic berth as host nation. Fifa’s executive committee decided to maintain the qualifying set-up used at this year’s World Cup in Germany.
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/ 16 September 2006
Fifa president Sepp Blatter said Friday that he will visit South Africa shortly to urge lawmakers to speed-up building work for the 2010 World Cup, amid growing concern about delays. Blatter said he would meet South African President Thabo Mbeki and make an appeal to the country’s Parliament ”to explain the value of the World Cup and to fire up the organising committee”.
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/ 13 September 2006
Fifa vice-president Jack Warner and his son face a day of destiny on Friday as global football’s governing body investigates corruption and embezzlement accusations against the pair. They are both accused of making money through the illegal sale of World Cup tickets and Fifa is due to examine a report into the affair.
The Phonak cycling team will disband at the end of the year, team owner Andy Rihs announced Tuesday, ten days after team leader Floyd Landis was sacked because of the Tour de France doping scandal. Rihs said the Landis affair had been the deciding factor. ”As a passionate cyclist, I am bitterly disappointed that the sport of cycling apparently has become a synonym for doping,” he said.
Drug-tainted German cyclist Jan Ullrich has vowed to win the Tour de France before he retires, despite being barred from this year’s race after being implicated in a doping scandal. Ullrich, who was subsequently sacked by T-Mobile after being prevented from taking part in this year’s Tour, said he wants to add another title to set alongside his 1997 triumph in the world-famous race.