JOHANNESBURG - IN A colourful explosion of traditional African music, dance and song accompanied by the deafening cheers of thousands of fans blowing on noisy plastic trumpets, the continent's first international football tournament opened on Sunday.
The two-week Confederations Cup is being used as a warm-up event for next year's World Cup - the first to be played on African soil.
MIRANSHAH (Pakistan) - THE latest in a string of bombs in north-west Pakistan killed eight people on Sunday as a US missile strike hit a tribal belt where troops are expected to launch a fresh anti-Taleban onslaught.
Militants remotely-detonated explosives hidden in a rickshaw, causing chaos at a busy Sunday market in Dera Ismail Khan town, with eight people killed and dozens injured, police and hospital officials said.
BANGKOK - THAI Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Sunday urged the country not to panic about swine flu, after the number of cases grew ninefold in four days and a cluster emerged in a key tourist hub.
Health authorities reported that confirmed cases of the A(H1N1) virus soared to 150 on Sunday, compared with just 16 on Wednesday, including a number of foreigners.
