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The success of the Olympic Football Tournament intensified FlFA's wish for its own world championship. Questionnaires were sent to the affiliated associations, asking whether they agreed to the organisation of a tournament and under what conditions.

Following a remarkable proposal by the Executive Committee, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam on 28 May 1928 decided to stage a world championship organised by FIFA. Now, the organising country had to be chosen.

These arguments were decisive. The FIFA Congress in Barcelona in 1929 assigned Uruguay as first host country of the FIFA World Cup ™. The other candidates had withdrawn.

the tiny Gulf state, which won the right to host the event nearly three years ago, is embroiled in controversy over the treatment of the huge migrant labor force within its borders.

Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, defended his country's efforts in a CNN interview, and said he was outraged by the claim made last week by an international labor organization that it is a "slave state."

The "slave state" claim came as Sharan Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation, warned that if current trends continue an estimated 4,000 migrant workers may die in Qatar as they toil on construction projects in the run-up to the World Cup.

soccer, really, is not “the world’s game.” Though it has the highest global participation rate of any sport, there are quite a few countries where it is not the most popular game. Those include eight of the world’s 10 most populous countries. On the whole, people in China, India, the U.S., and Indonesia—the top four in population—play soccer but have other sports they prefer. Only in No. 5 Brazil and No. 7 Nigeria does soccer have a clear edge.

All the countries who have ever won a World Cup have at least one thing in common: Soccer has no real competitor for athletic talent.

There were years of painstaking building of teams and leagues before a national squad could be assembled that was good enough to challenge at World Cup level. (For a brief history, I recommend National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer by Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist.)

While aboard the I.S.S., he tore out a plastic divider from his Flight Data File and used the magic of fluid dynamics to create an open cup.

We interact with coffee through aroma as much as through taste.

Together, they created a brewing system that would combine some of the charm of an open cup with the essential chemistry of a good Earth-based pour-over.

There are very few things as enjoyable as hating another soccer team and everything it stands for. Because it ends up being (mostly) harmless yet poignant, hate derived from soccer—be it from a legendary rivalry, a personal grudge or any other reason—is the best kind of hate. It might actually be the only acceptable kind of hate.

What I resent are teams who believe winning is their exclusive privilege before the referee (chinga tu madre!) has even started the game.Enter Brazil, kings of entitlement.

The elegant talent of Zico and Eder has been replaced by the robotic muteness of Hulk or the overestimated antics of Neymar, a sort of puffed up Woody-Woodpecker. Even Brazilian extravagance has lost its class: Where before roamed Romario—beautifully defined by Jorge Valdano as a “footballer straight out of an animated cartoon”—now one can find Fred, who has the charisma of a chloroform soaked rag. And there’s more. This Brazil can become violent in an instant. The rough game (the antifutbol) was never part of the Brazilian repertoire. It is now and it has been for a while (ask Tab Ramos if he remembers Leonardo’s elbow). In the 2014 squad, even Neymar carries an axe. This is far from a joyful team.

During a private equity boom in 2007, his group acquired Univision for $13.7 billion in a bidding war orchestrated by the company’s largest shareholder and former chairman, A. Jerrold Perenchio. Mr. Perenchio, a onetime Hollywood agent, saw the potential of Spanish-language television in 1992, when he bought Univision for just $500 million.

Univision, which was started in 1955 as a local San Antonio TV station, is now a sprawling media empire based in New York, reaching nearly 100 million television households across the United States.

“We’re seen as a Spanish-language broadcaster that mostly competes with Telemundo,” the company’s chief executive, Randy Falco, said. “But in my view, we should be competing with the English-language networks because increasingly we will have an audience that will surpass them.”

By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at

The Norway-based thinktank Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem

Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things

While earlier generations might have taken their cues from classmates or magazines, tweens and teens now see their peers on platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.

And it’s spawning viral moments in retail, as evidenced by last week’s release of limited-edition Stanley tumblers at Target. Fans lined up outside stores before sunrise to nab the cup made in collaboration with Starbucks, and arguments broke out at a handful of locations. T

This age group also is snapping up pricey makeup and skin care, even products usually reserved for “mature” skin. That’s given rise to viral TikToks from exasperated adults.

the tech ethos has escaped the bounds of hardware and software. Tech is turning into a culture and a style, one that has spread into new foods and clothing, and all other kinds of nonelectronic goods. Tech has become a lifestyle brand.

Because it draws a critical mass of tech-conversant people to a small space, SXSW has also made a reputation as a catalyst for new social networking ideas.

there is a sense of ennui in the world of tech conferences. What is the purpose of a conference in an age of instant online collaboration?

Egypt protest after tea vendor 'killed by police'

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Egypt's capital, Cairo, to protest after a tea vendor was allegedly shot dead by police.

he unrest erupted after a policeman allegedly killed the man and wounded two others during an argument over the price of a cup of tea.

The largest storm surge in modern history in the Philippines sent walls of water over half a mile inland along a crowded coastline when Typhoon Haiyan came ashore here last Friday, erasing villages and towns and leaving thousands of people dead or missing.

Decomposing bodies still lie along the roads, like the corpse in a pink, short-sleeved shirt and blue shorts facedown in a puddle 100 yards from the airport

“It was a tsunami-like storm surge, it is the first time,”

'Born Among the Dead': The Children of Mexico City's Tragic 1985 Earthquake

It was 7:17 AM when a tremor with a moment magnitude of 8.0 shook the foundations of Mexico City which, at the time, housed 10 million people.

By presidential order, Mexico was off limits a few days. It's said that the government initially wanted to block any international aid convoys in order to prevent the world from knowing the full scale of the disaster. The government's biggest concern at the time seemed to be that FIFA would want to cancel the World Cup, which the country was supposed to host the following year.

The problem is that soccer dominance is an important part of Brazil's sports identity, and this loss cut to the core of it. As Eric Simons, author of The Secret Lives of Sports Fans, explained in an email, "If you're Brazilian, your identity is based on self-concept that you're always the best soccer team in the world, and you know that everyone else knows it, so you're proud." So the pain of losing isn't, in this case, that of an underdog happy to be there, and for the Brazilians to lose in this manner is to collide violently against all sorts of national expectations and self-conceptions.

"What happens when your pride, self-concept, and identity are suddenly obliterated in front of the entire world?" said Simons. "I don't know. I don't know if anyone does; this is, in sports, something of an unprecedented self-esteem catastrophe. Has anyone that good, with that much expectation, every lost that badly before, with so many people watching?" The answer to that question may be no, which would mean we're in somewhat uncharted sports-trauma territory.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Georgetown University, for instance, compared two groups of toddlers. One group played with plush toys that had been preprogrammed to say the child’s name, and to say that they had the same favorite food and song as the child; the other played with plush toys that called each child “Pal” and liked different things. When the same toy character on-screen presented math skills — like arranging cups in order of size — the first group of toddlers performed better than those who played with less-personalized plush toys

toys able to personalize their responses to children in real time could have an even greater effect on them.

Mr. Jacob hit upon the idea of developing conversational characters for children a few years ago after his daughter Toby, then 7, asked him if she could use Skype to talk to her stuffed animals. He had previously worked as the chief technology officer at Pixar Animation Studios. So he talked over the possibility with a former Pixar colleague, Martin Reddy. They decided to start ToyTalk.

BARCELONA, Spain - The regional parliament of Catalonia approved a plan Monday to set up a road map for independence from Spain by 2017, in defiance of the central government.

The proposal was made by pro-secession lawmakers from the "Together for Yes" alliance and the extreme left-wing Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP). The groups together obtained a parliamentary majority in regional elections in September.

The Spanish government reacted swiftly. In a nationally televised address, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that his government will appeal against the decision at the Constitutional Court, which has in the past blocked moves toward independence."Catalonia is not going anywhere, nothing is going to break," Rajoy said.He added he would meet with the leader of the main opposition Socialist Party, Pedro Sanchez, to forge a common front against the separatists.