There'll be luxury waterfront living, cafes, restaurants, a state of the art stadium, a high technology park, and many other attractions to get people into the area. But like all great schemes the Melbourne Docklands Project has hit a few snags along the way. The Docklands Stadium is a centrepiece to the Docklands development in Melbourne, part-owned by Channel 7 and obviously designed as a commercial concern. It seems the media moguls, in running many things in our lives these days, also have their favourites. The National Rugby League premiers, Melbourne Storm, won't, it seems, get a look in at the new venue because Kerry Stokes says they can't pull enough of a crowd.
Today is the start of the biggest World Cup in soccer history.
Even the draw for the 2002 qualifying round in Tokyo tonight is expected to attract a worldwide audience of more than 1,000 million people. But Australian soccer fans might be living in the lucky country. This story provides a rare glimpse behind the closed world of the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a nation where Islamic Fundamentalism is taken to the extreme and harsh punishments are metered out for minor breaches of Islamic law. Afghanistan continues to struggle to support the ongoing civil war funded by the manufacture of heroin, on a scale unparalleled in the world. The United Nations estimates there are about 140,000 refugees still in West Timor.