Latin America

Soccer organisers' nightmare of travel disruption to the World Cup becomes reality Wednesday as the tournament kicks off with three-quarters of the official airline grounded by a pilots' strike.

Air France signed a surprise pay deal with its striking pilots Wednesday, ending a devastating 10-day dispute at the airline just hours before the start of the World Cup soccer tournament.

Dealers say foreign exchange trade in London, the world's busiest currency market, will slow to a trickle next Monday when England makes its debut in the World Cup.

Over 200,000 fake merchandising items were seized by French authorities before the World Cup and thousands were still on sale around the stadiums during Wednesday's first two matches, a government official said on Thursday.

Colombian leftist guerrillas toasted Brazil's and Mexico's World Cup victories and vowed to fight for the right of every Colombian to enjoy "happiness, fiesta and football."

Hundreds of youths went on the rampage at a detention centre in northeast Thailand in the early hours of Wednesday after officials prevented them from watching a World Cup soccer match on television, police said.

London based ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi says it has won the global advertising contract for New Zealand's national rugby union team, the All Blacks, by their new sponsor Adidas-Salomon AG.

Soccer sportswear manufacturer Umbro has added Norway striker Tore Andre Flo - who scored in last night's improbable 2-1 win against world champions Brazil - to its list of sponsored stars.

Soccer's World Cup continues to pull major TV audiences, even in countries whose national teams are not involved in a particular match.

In a rare show of European unity, French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn joked that France and the Netherlands should share the World Cup, predicting their soccer teams would meet in the July 12 final.

Sunday night's World Cup final between France and Brazil set a new television audience record in host country France with an average of 23.626 million people watching, a spokesman for audience measurement body Mediametrie said on Monday.

TF1, France's biggest private terrestrial television station, had receipts of 52 million francs for advertising it carried during the World Cup final on Sunday, an advertising executive at the station said.

Spanish-language broadcaster Univision has turned out to be biggest U.S. beneficiary in this years World Cup.

US network ABC scored a 6.9 rating in 40 major markets for its coverage of the World Cup final.

The tournament turned France into a nation of soccer enthusiasts, with pre-competition sales of new television sets and video recorders soaring

Brazil has said it would bid to stage the 2006 World Cup, and immediately received the backing of the South American Football Confederation (CSF).