Top Story USA

06 March 2007

Chicago, Los Angeles in Olympic contest

Chicago is competing against Los Angeles as to who will be US candidate for the 2016 Olympic games.
The Windy City will host the 11-member U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and will give the group a two-day tour of the city to inspect existing venues and sites of new structures. The tour will be hosted by Mayor Richard Daley who talked of the plan to build a new stadium and Olympic Village, the centerpieces of the proposal. The city plans to build a $366 million, 80,000-seat temporary stadium on the South Side and a $1.1 billion lakefront athletes' village.
Mayor Daley says Chicago lawmakers have promises to make all arrangements to construct an 80,000-seat stadium at a cost of $366 million if the city is selected to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
The Group just left Los Angeles, which maintains it already has the facilities needed to host the games, after organizing the competition twice in 1932 and again in 1984.
Protagonists for City of Angels say one of its strongest selling points is that most of its Olympic structures already exist, while Chicago would still have to start from the cratch from the start.

9 U.S. Soldiers killed in Iraq bombing

Nine U.S. soldiers from the same command have been killed in two separate incidents of bomb attacks in provinces north of Baghdad, the US military says.

US and N Korea begin historic talks

Talks aimed at establishing diplomatic relations between the US and North Korea for the first time in more than 50 years have opened on Monday in New York.

Bush outlines Latin America aid

Two days before a tour of Latin America US President George W Bush said the United States will spend tens of millions of dollars to alleviate the plight of the region's poor.