[Aljazeera] In the early 1990s, South African men’s football team carried the hopes of millions, that it would bring together a divided nation at the end of apartheid.
In July 1992, the team was readmitted to FIFA after a nearly 30 year ban.
However, Bafana Bafana have failed to make a lasting impact and observers are divided on the reasons.
Some former national team greats say its problems come from a lack of consistency, others point to the absence of South Africans in top European leagues as an indicator of player quality.
Others say the players, and the team, need to develop their own footballing identity instead of imitating the way teams develop in Europe.
#6
Any sport that looks like it was designed by committee deserves to die: you dress one guy up in different clothes and make him stand in a playpen, reminds me of the last kid picked in a schoolyard baseball game, field markings look like a hockey rink and basketball court mated, and score ends in a tie, with time kept by some dude with a stopwatch and they add time ‘ just because.’
[JPost] The leftist former president overtook far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the dying moments of the bitterly-fought elections.
Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won Brazil's bitterly-fought election on Sunday, according to pollster Datafolha, denying far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro a second term.
The polling firm called the election with 95% of the votes counted in Latin America's largest country. The official count stood at 50.7% of votes for Lula against 49.3% for Bolsonaro.
A significant number of votes still remained to be counted in the Bolsonaro stronghold state of Sao Paulo, but his leftist rival was inching ahead in a runoff marred by accusations from Lula's Workers Party that police suppressed votes in some regions.
TWO VISIONS FOR BRAZIL'S FUTURE
The election serves as a referendum on two starkly different - and vehemently opposed - visions for Brazil's future.
Bolsonaro has vowed to consolidate a sharp rightward turn in Brazilian politics after a presidency that witnessed one of the world's deadliest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the pandemic and widespread deforestation in the Amazon basin.
Lula promises more social and environmental responsibility, recalling the rising prosperity of his 2003-2010 presidency, before corruption scandals tarnished his Workers Party.
Bolsonaro has without proof described the voting system as fraud-prone, raising concern he may not concede defeat, following the example of his ideological ally, former US President Donald Trump.
That has added to tensions in Brazil's most polarizing election since its return to democracy in 1985 after a military dictatorship that Lula, a former union leader, rallied against and Bolsonaro, a former army captain, invokes with nostalgia.
ALLEGED VOTER SUPPRESSION
Lula allies on Sunday said police had stopped buses carrying voters on highways even though the electoral authority had prohibited them from doing so. Brazilian media reported that such operations were concentrated in the northeast, where Lula has the strongest support.
"What happened today is criminal. There is no justification for the (police) to mount roadblocks on Election Day," Workers Party President Gleisi Hoffman told journalists.
However, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), which runs Brazil's elections, said no one had been prevented from voting and declined to extend voting hours. The Federal Highway Police said they had complied with court orders.
With Bolsonaro stickers on her chest, Rio de Janeiro resident Ana Maria Vieira said she was certain to vote for the president, and would never countenance picking Lula.
"I saw what Lula and his criminal gang did to this country," she said, as she arrived to vote in Rio's Copacabana neighborhood, adding that she thought Bolsonaro's handling of the economy had been "fantastic."
A Lula victory would mark a stunning comeback for the leftist leader, who was jailed in 2018 for 19 months on bribery convictions that the Supreme Court overturned last year, clearing the way for him to seek a third presidential term.
In Sao Paulo, 31-year-old lawyer Gerardo Maiar said he was horrified by what Bolsonaro had done as president.
"The last four years were an embarrassment, both nationally and internationally," he said after voting. "I think it's ridiculous for Brazil
#7
Wouldn't they be better off packing a thousand chinamen in the rear with a thousand peloton bikes with dynamos? Make it a thousand uighurs if the Hans won't send their baby boys.
#8
Stupids, batteries have always been used on submarines!
Posted by: Papa Cooky ||
10/31/2022 17:55 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Stupids, batteries have always been used on submarines!
Um... yes, but these were some:
submarines (Oberon class of the 1960s-1990s) had two lead acid batteries containing 224 cells each with a nominal voltage of 440 volts.. The cells were rated 74.20 ampere-hours at a 5 hour rate (nominal voltage of each cell was 2.2 V)
Lead acid. Not lithium. Lithium burns when water contacts it.
Stupid.
#12
And what is this tortoise you're speaking of?
First sub was constructed by Nikonov
For Peter the Great,
But his date, Kate, she hate:
"To display Russian flag, does not leak enough!"
#1
I hate when the media calls this a "stampede". It's not. That makes it sound like it's the people's fault. It's not. It's called a crowd crush and it happens whenever too many people get into too small a place.
Ditto.
One of the reasons I was happy giving up flying. The crowd at the TSA checkpoints would have been just as spectacular for a terrorist as any plane.
#12
Actual story excerpt: "Officials added it was believed that people were crushed to death after a large crowd began pushing forward in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel, a major party spot in Seoul, upon hearing rumours [Emphasis added.]a celebrity was nearby."
[Daily Beest] Video footage shows pedestrians attempting to sway an Indian suspension bridge in the moments before it catastrophically collapsed, leaving at least 141 people dead as of Monday.
Rescuers expect the death toll to continue to rise after the bridge fell apart in the western state of Gujarat on Sunday. The majority of those killed were women, children, or elderly people, a local official told the BBC. Almost 180 people were successfully rescued, however, in an overnight operation involving national and state disaster relief personnel and the Indian military. Rescuers on boats plucked victims from the dark waters around the bridge and ferried them to the river’s muddy banks, where volunteers and soldiers waited with stretchers to receive the living and the dead.
The 754-foot bridge over the Machchu river, which was built during British rule in the 19th century, had only been reopened for four days after months of repairs when the tragic incident occurred.
Video footage of the seconds leading up to the disaster appears to show people attempting to sway the crowded structure as others take photos. The cables on one side of the bridge then snap, plunging the crowd around 33 feet into the water below.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Daily Beest] Video footage shows pedestrians attempting to sway an Indian suspension bridge in the moments before it catastrophically collapsed, leaving at least 141 people dead as of Monday.
