Johannesburg  - The South African Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the 2010 World Cup said Tuesday that they were happy with arrangements for both the World Cup and next year's Confederations Cup.

Addressing a media briefing during a LOC board meeting the LOC CEO Danny Jordaan said that they were happy with the way things are going.

"Since ticket sales started for the Confederations Cup on the weekend, we have already had 30,000 hits on the website. It is too early to say how the sales are going at other outlets, but we are hoping the stadiums will be full."

Jordaan said that the Board had approved a budget of 4.018 billion Rand (386.5 million dollars) for the two tournaments.

Boppard, Germany  - A party of sick British pensioners were isolated Tuesday aboard a river cruise boat, the Lady Anne, after German authorities put them under quarantine on the Rhine River.

Geneva  - About 75 million children globally, over half of them girls, do not receive education, including one third of primary school age children in sub-Saharan Africa, the UN's education, science and culture agency said Tuesday.

The lack of education and inequalities in schooling systems caused poverty and diminished opportunity, according to UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report which said governments had to take action to make improvements.

In general, children from poor countries are three times less likely to attend primary school than children from rich nations, and the education they do receive will probably be of lower quality.

Wuerzburg, Germany  - Conductor Jin Wang, 48, has been sacked from his post in Germany, municipal authorities said Tuesday after an allegation that he sexually harassed a young woman musician.

Chinese-born Wang, who was director of music at the Mainfranken Theatre and conducted the Wuerzburg Philharmonic Orchestra, had resisted pressure to resign after the city of Wuerzburg suspended him on full pay.

A municipal spokesman said he was sacked last Friday after fruitless efforts for a negotiated solution.

The city said that regardless of whether the harassment claim was true or not, it had an obligation as employer to act in the interests of the other 240 staff of the theatre.

Vienna - The international Association of Space Explorers (ASE) on Tuesday called on the United Nations to develop strategies against asteroids threatening to hit earth, in a report presented at the United Nations in Vienna.

Among the known 5,600 so-called near-earth objects, and the 500,000 additional ones expected to be discovered in the next 15 years, "several dozen will pose an uncomfortably high risk of striking Earth and inflicting local or regional devastation," the astronauts said in their report.

Brussels - The European Union and Syria on Tuesday moved closer to signing an Association Agreement, which will eventually grant the Middle Eastern country access to the bloc's neighbourhood funds.

At a meeting in Brussels, officials from the European Commission and Syria said they had agreed on a series of technical updates to the agreement, which was initialled in
2004 but subsequently frozen as a result of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.