Browsing: kicks off

Fortune favors the bold, the old Latin proverb says.  Only fools try to predict a World Cup final, a more modern proverb counters.  So let’s be bold fools together, shall we?  Here are 10 predictions for the World Cup, which kicks off today with…

Brazil kicks off the World Cup Thursday hoping to unite the football-mad country after a chaotic seven-year build-up plagued by violent protests. The 32-team extravaganza gets under way in the teeming mega-city of Sao Paulo, where the host nation’s…

A confidential FIFA report raises concerns about World Cup match-fixing vulnerabilities just 12 days before the global football showdown kicks off in Brazil, the New York Times reported Saturday. The newspaper obtained a copy of the 44-page internal…

A Japanese whaling fleet left port Saturday under tight security, marking the first hunt since the UN’s top court last month ordered Tokyo to stop killing whales in the Antarctic. Four ships departed from the northeastern fishing town of Ayukawa to…

Sydney kicked off New Year celebrations with a dazzling fireworks display, the first in a wave of pyrotechnics to usher in 2014 from Hong Kong to world record-chasing Dubai. Seven tonnes of explosives lit up Australia’s biggest city, with fireworks…