South Africa

After watching World Cup games with thousands of fans in France and Germany, Pete Medd will view Saturday's contest between the United States and England much closer to home — on a big-screen in what he hopes to be a packed Towson Town Center. Medd, a former player and assistant coach at Towson University who is now president and part owner of Crystal Palace Baltimore, the city's second-tier professional league team, said this year's World Cup, which begins today in South Africa, has more buzz locally going in than any in memory.

Rising into the pre-dawn African sky, long before the sun Friday morning, came the sound of the vuvuzelas. They signaled the beginning of a historic day, the day when much of the sporting world's attention — even in the U.S. — was focused not on the NBA Finals, not on baseball's pennant races, not even on the Chicago Blackhawks' celebrations of winning the Stanley Cup. Instead, eyes were turned to a soccer game being played in...

Italy, the reigning world champion, finally touched down in South Africa on Wednesday, landing in Johannesburg with a thud rather than gliding in smoothly as the team that won it all in 2006. Coach Marcello Lippi is under no illusions that repeating his Germany 2006 triumph will be easy, especially since no team has successfully defended the World Cup since Brazil in 1962. Still, Lippi believes in the Azzurri, dismissing talk about the team being too old, the injuries to key players being too costly and the altitude being too much to overcome.

Edson Buddle scored his first two international goals and Herculez Gomez added a third Saturday to lead the United States over Australia 3-1 in a World Cup warmup match at Roodepoort, South Africa. Playing just his third game for the national team, Buddle scored in the fourth and 31st minutes. That tally offset a 19th-minute equalizer by Tim Cahill , who beat Everton teammate Tim Howard for his 20th international goal. "It seems like everything Edson touches is a goal," Howard said.

The destination is Rustenburg, South Africa. The attraction is the World Cup. But for Katy Hudson and her father, this five-day trip of a lifetime is actually the culmination of their 16-year journey through the world of soccer. Hudson is a former All-Metro goalkeeper at River Hill High School and a 22-year-old cancer survivor. The unique skills that allowed her to start three seasons at two Division I colleges also enabled her to play through the chemotherapy and radiation treatments she received as a high school junior in 2004 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Organizers will announce Friday at 10 a.m. that Manchester City from the English Premier League will face Inter Milan of Italy's Serie A League in a friendly soccer match July 31 at M&T Bank Stadium. The announcement of the event was delayed earlier this week. The game will be played less than three weeks after the end of the World Cup in South Africa. Last July, AC Milan played Chelsea at M&T Bank Stadium before a sold-out crowd of 71,000. Soon after, a $100,000 feasibility study to examine the financial viability of building a soccer stadium in Baltimore was approved.

On a recent Friday afternoon, a 40-foot metal shipping container clanged down in front of the Catonsville home of Martin and Audrey Peter. As soon as the massive container hit the pavement, a handful of men led by Martin Peter began filling it with medical equipment: motorized wheelchairs, walkers and assorted devices that had been stored in the Peters' home. The crew worked at a hurried pace — in just two hours the truck that had dropped the container would return to haul it to the Port of Baltimore, where it would be loaded onto a freighter bound for Durban, South Africa.

"On a knife edge." That's an image used to the point of cliché by headline writers in British newspapers whenever a situation hangs precariously in the balance. Cliché or not, it perfectly describes the situation in Sudan. While millions around the world have focused on displacement and death in Sudan's Darfur region, southern Sudan has been moving along the path toward peace. This is remarkable because before violence was visited on Darfur, four decades of war left an even greater humanitarian tragedy in the south, with millions dead and displaced in a conflict that seemed endless and intractable.

Motivation level high Paul Doyle Hartford Courant After a sometimes lethargic performance against the Netherlands on Wednesday, the U.S. doesn't seem primed for much success in the World Cup. And with the Americans slipping to 18th in the FIFA rankings, expectations couldn't be lower. That's why the U.S. can sneak out of the first round in South Africa. After opening with a doozy - England on June 12 - the Americans have Slovenia and Algeria.

Sewall W. "Susie" Mann, a lifelong athlete who was known as the "Daredevil Granny" and who embarked on an odyssey of adventures that included sky diving and swimming with dolphins after receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer last summer, died of the disease Feb. 15 at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. The Mercy Ridge resident was 79. After a long history of cardiac disease, Mrs. Mann, who was known as "Susie," had successful bypass surgery last March, only to find out four months later that she had terminal stomach cancer.