SPORTS-BRAZIL: Fans Cope With Favourite Status, World Cup ‘Baggage’

Bad memories are putting a damper on Brazil's enthusiasm for its national football team - enough to rattle fan confidence even though the team is the international favourite to win the FIFA World Cup tournament, which kicked off Friday in Germany.

SPORTS: A Lot Goes Round With the Football

In a marked departure from previous World Cup football events, host nation Germany has conjured up a hugely ambitious cultural programme for the tens of thousands of football tourists who will soon be flooding into the country, many of them without stadium tickets.

SPORTS: Green Goals for World Cup Nets

With its Green Goal programme, the organisers of the 2006 Football World Cup aim to reduce the environmental impact of the international sports tournament that is expected to draw more than three million spectators in Germany beginning Jun. 9. But environmental groups say the efforts will come up short.

SPORTS-KENYA: “For Our People in East Africa, Soccer Is Very, Very Important”

It has been dubbed "The Greatest Show on Earth", and in Kenya that's precisely what the Football World Cup is. So, with just days before the latest tournament kicks off in Germany, excitement amongst sports fans in the East African country is mounting.

RIGHTS: More Nations Crack Down on Human Trafficking

More countries are taking action to discourage the annual trafficking of as many as 800,000 humans across international borders, according to the State Department's 2006 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, released here Monday.

ARGENTINA: World Cup – Behind Bars

The Argentine team lost 7-3 to Ivory Coast and was eliminated from the 2006 world football championship. But luckily for Argentina, this is not the World Cup that kicks off this month in Germany, but a contest that has already begun in 32 prisons in the province of Buenos Aires.

SPORTS: Far Right Goal Under Close Watch

As Germany preens itself for an influx of World Cup tourists, a racist attack on a politician and a planned neo-Nazi demonstration have overshadowed preparations for the international event.

SPORTS: The World Kicks Around in Germany

From Africa to Iceland, from Brazil to South Korea, from Paraguay to Tunisia, a galaxy of foreign stars come to play football in the Bundesliga, Germany's top soccer league.

RIGHTS: Don’t Kick the Football Makers

With tickets to the World Cup in Germany hard to come by, millions of fans are calming their football fever buying World Cup T-shirts, toys and, of course, footballs.

GERMANY: World Cup – a Magnet for Forced Prostitution?

Football players, fans and journalists from all over the world are getting ready to head to the World Cup in Germany. And among those packing their bags are about 40,000 sex workers who will be there to satisfy the high demand for their services.

TRINIDAD: “Soca Warriors” Get a Shot at the World Cup

Sixteen years after it failed to make the World Cup Championships in Italy, Trinidad and Tobago is heading to Germany next year as the smallest country, both in size and population, on the world's premier soccer stage.

RIGHTS: Sports Increasingly Mirror a Racist World

When soccer was considered an unruly spectator sport in years gone by, there was the story of a referee assigned to officiate at a tension-charged football match in a Latin American country arriving in an armoured battle tank just to protect himself from a violence-prone crowd.

/ARTS WEEKLY/SPORTS: Scoring a Goal for World Peace

The United Nations is in the process of deploying a new weapon to promote world peace: sports.

CULTURE: The Home of English Football’s Most Ardent Fans? Uganda

It's a cold, wet Sunday evening outside the Little Highbury pub. Inside, patrons are glued to a huge television screen showing an eagerly awaited football match between two English Premier League teams: Arsenal and Chelsea.

CHILDREN: UNICEF Warns of Impending Danger in Somalia

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned of impending danger to some 60,000 malnourished children in Somalia - the only Third World nation that has failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

KENYA-WOMEN: FEMALE ACADEMICS QUIT AMID ‘GENDER BIAS’ CLAIMS

FEMALE ACADEMICS FRUSTRATED BY WHAT THEY VIEW AS UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF SERVICE ARE ABANDONING KENYA'S UNIVERSITIES FOR GREENER PASTURES.

BURUNDI-WOMEN: HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL

AFTER MELCHIOR NDADAYE WAS ELECTED BURUNDI'S PRESIDENT IN JULY 1993, HE APPOINTED THREE WOMEN TO HIS CABINET AND NAMED TWO MORE AS PROVINCIAL GOVERNORS.