Johannesburg - World football body FIFA aims to prevent a black market trade in cheap tickets for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa by making tickets for the tournament only available for collection in the country, FIFA announced Wednesday.

Tickets for the tournament go on sale to the general public on Friday on FIFA's website, fifa. com, and through nationwide branches of South Africa's First National Bank (FNB), a national World Cup sponsor.

This sale starts online at 11 a. m. GMT (1 p. m. South African time) and runs until March 31.

Johannesburg, Feb. 18 : Captains of Australia and South Africa -- Ricky Ponting and Graeme Smith - are leaving no stone unturned in upping the ante through mind games ahead of what promises to be a competitive Test series on South African soil.

While Ponting has said that his side and he are not in South Africa to pass on the baton of World Champions to South Africa, Smith as rubbished his Australian counterparts claims of his side being under pressure to retain the tag of favourites to win in the wake of the Proteas series victory in Australia.

Johannesburg/London - South African authorities on Tuesday announced the formation of a special task team to tackle drug smuggling through the country's airports.

The announcement follows the discovery by authorities at London's Heathrow airport Monday of five kilogrammes of cocaine in luggage allegedly belonging to South African Airways (SAA) crew.

The find is the second such case of alleged drug smuggling by SAA

crew through Heathrow in less than a month.

Sydney/Johannesburg, Feb. 17 : Australian captain Ricky Ponting wanted to learn all he could about the youngest member of the touring squad, Phillip Hughes, and would have been most surprised to hear that Hughes loves to breed and show chickens.

For Hughes, this activity is a passion, but he rarely talks about it.

"He used to show chooks, and he used to help me breed them. It is something he keeps very close to him, and it is something he can''t do in the city, but it was one of his hobbies," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted his father, Greg, as saying.

Sydney, Feb. 16: Having beaten Australia in Australia, the South Africans would naturally be cocksure about using their home advantage to challenge Ricky Ponting's team and dislodge it from its championship pedestal, feels cricket columnist Peter Roebuck.

In a column for the Sydney Morning Herald, Roebuck predicts a compelling series in South Africa.

While stating that the Australians ought to enjoy themselves in South Africa, Roebuck said that they could take a leaf out of Graeme Smith and company's book on exhibiting joviality.

Vienna  - In the race to succeed Mohamed ElBaradei at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Japanese ambassador Yukiya Amano has secured a clear lead over South African diplomat Abdul Samad Minty, according to diplomats in Vienna.

Both contenders indicated in interviews with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that if elected, they planned to look beyond the Iran nuclear issue and focus on the effects of the expected global rise in nuclear power use.