Nuclear Football

Doomsday could start with a football -- the so-called "nuclear football" as the attache case carried wherever the US president goes is popularly known.

It's a mega manufacturing facility, the covered area of which is the size of several football fields. A road runs through the shop floor at the unit of Atomenergomash, a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state atomic energy corporation. And workers use bicycles to commute between workstations.

It's a plain, bulging leather satchel, but inside it has the ominous power to unleash a nuclear armageddon.

Didier Drogba's first month in China is being heralded as an unequivocal success, the powerful Ivory Coast striker earning rave reviews, the moniker "Devil Beast" and being compared to "a nuclear bomb".

Spanish soccer giants will pay a tribute to the Fukushima nuclear disaster victims during their stay next week in Japan for the Club World Cup.

If ever there was one, this was a victory to be savored. After a year that will go down in history as one of Japan's most difficult, a period scarred by the horrors of a deadly earthquake and tsunami and the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, the women's World Cup finally brought the nation something it desperately needed.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter formally confirmed Japan as hosts of the 2011 Club World Cup on Monday despite the devastation of the recent earthquake and tsunami which triggered a nuclear emergency.

Japan will seek to reassure Sepp Blatter that it is a safe venue for hosting world football as the FIFA president visits in the wake of a tsunami which sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, Japan's FA said.

New Zealand's football association said Thursday its team had scrapped a March 29 charity match against Japan, citing safety concerns amid the country's ongoing quake-triggered nuclear emergency.

Doomsday could start with a football -- the so-called "nuclear football" as the attache case carried wherever the US president goes is popularly known.

It's a mega manufacturing facility, the covered area of which is the size of several football fields. A road runs through the shop floor at the unit of Atomenergomash, a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state atomic energy corporation. And workers use bicycles to commute between workstations.

It's a plain, bulging leather satchel, but inside it has the ominous power to unleash a nuclear armageddon.

Didier Drogba's first month in China is being heralded as an unequivocal success, the powerful Ivory Coast striker earning rave reviews, the moniker "Devil Beast" and being compared to "a nuclear bomb".

Spanish soccer giants will pay a tribute to the Fukushima nuclear disaster victims during their stay next week in Japan for the Club World Cup.

If ever there was one, this was a victory to be savored. After a year that will go down in history as one of Japan's most difficult, a period scarred by the horrors of a deadly earthquake and tsunami and the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, the women's World Cup finally brought the nation something it desperately needed.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter formally confirmed Japan as hosts of the 2011 Club World Cup on Monday despite the devastation of the recent earthquake and tsunami which triggered a nuclear emergency.

Japan will seek to reassure Sepp Blatter that it is a safe venue for hosting world football as the FIFA president visits in the wake of a tsunami which sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, Japan's FA said.

New Zealand's football association said Thursday its team had scrapped a March 29 charity match against Japan, citing safety concerns amid the country's ongoing quake-triggered nuclear emergency.