43 Die in Soccer Stampede Soccer is the world's most popular sport, but sometimes it seems like the most cursed. A stampede at a crowded stadium in Johannesburg, at the start of one of the season's biggest matches, killed 43 fans and numbed soccer-mad South Africa. The city declared a state of emergency and a curfew after four nights in which the police used tear gas and rubber bullets to stop clusters of young black men who looted stores and intimidated whites. After escaping prosecution for 38 years, two men were indicted last May for their involvement in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., which killed four young black girls and galvanized sympathy for the civil rights cause. Prosecutors plan to seek another evaluation of Mr. Cherry.
Jury selection begins tomorrow.
The Great Banana War is over. The standoff, in which the United States tried to end protectionist European limits on banana imports, dragged on throughout the Clinton administration. President Bush's trade team basked in a little glory after it managed to negotiate a compromise that effectively ends the dispute, dropping retaliatory tariffs on some European goods in exchange for modified import limits that are to be lifted entirely in 2006. The economic news looked bad, with unemployment claims up and retail sales down. But on Wall Street, optimism returned.