Africa

What sort of World Cup can we look forward to next year? One that will be played in winter, for sure, with cold temperatures and rain making a stark contrast to the sunny summer of Germany '06. One that will see the host nation, South Africa, struggle on the field unless FIFA, which is not beyond such shenanigans, fiddles the Dec. 4 draw in Cape Town and places the Bafana Bafana (the Boys) in a relatively easy group. One that, Spain notwithstanding, almost assuredly will be won by a previous winner.

For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim's ancestors herded cattle and goats across an unforgiving landscape in southern Somalia where few others were hearty enough to survive. This year, Ibrahim became the first in his clan to throw in the towel, abandoning his land and walking for a week to bring his family to this overcrowded refugee camp in Kenya. He's not fleeing warlords, Islamist insurgents or Somalia's 18-year civil war. He's fleeing the weather. "I give up," said the father of five as he stood in line recently to register at the camp.

Imagine that it is 1994 again and that the opening game of the World Cup is about to take place at Soldier Field in Chicago. Or perhaps it's the first game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, or at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, or at any of the other six venues used during the '94 tournament. Now, imagine the crowds outside the stadium, the fans in a festive and anticipatory mood, children among them. Now imagine a cow being led on a rope to a designated spot outside the stadium and having its throat cut and its blood drained as part of the pregame ritual.

Here's how to pitch this (true) story to Hollywood: Ordinary guy named John, ordinary Sunday, cycling home into a setting sun. Monster roars out of the bushes! John abandons his bike, flees in terror. The creature smashes the bicycle, catches him in a few short strides, grabs him by the shirt. But he slides out of his shirt and falls to the ground. It picks him up again and he slips out of his trousers. Naked, too afraid to even to scream, he scrambles away. But he doesn't get far. The shrieking monster smashes him against a tree.

As a senior police official, Edmundo Mendes' job is to arrest the South American cocaine traffickers who use his troubled West African country, with its starry array of remote islands, as a transit point for drug shipments bound for Europe. It hasn't been easy. To demonstrate, Mendes walked a few steps from his office into the gritty mix of smoke and car exhaust in downtown Bissau. He fished a ring of keys from his pocket and made quick work of a rusty padlock. The metal door groaned open to a small courtyard.

The United States has decided not to participate in a U.N. conference on racism in April unless the final document is changed to drop its criticism of religion and all references to Israel, a senior U.S. official said. The conference is a follow-up to a 2001 gathering in Durban, South Africa, which was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery. The U.S. and Israel walked out midway through that meeting. Israel and Canada have already announced that they will boycott the conference in Geneva.

South Africa barred the Dalai Lama from a peace conference in Johannesburg this week, hoping to keep good relations with trading partner China but instead generating a storm of criticism. Friday's peace conference was organized by South African soccer officials to highlight the first World Cup to be held in Africa, which South Africa will host in 2010. But because the Dalai Lama isn't being allowed to attend, it is now being boycotted by fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners retired Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President F.W. de Klerk, as well as members of the Nobel Committee.