The World Rub

European soccer fans are pissed off. And with good reason. Turns out very few of them will be able to get their hands on the estimated 3.37 million tickets being pumped out for the 64 games of the long-awaited 2006 World Cup, hosted by Germany. A whopping two-thirds of the tickets will go to private groups, including soccer associations, sponsors, the media, VIPs and soccer officials. That will leave a mere 812,000 tickets to be split among Europe's more than 456 million residents. The news has left soccer fans -- not exactly known for their docility -- raging. Still, says Franz Beckenbauer, president of the German World Cup organizing committee, "there is no way to avoid" the situation.

Tickets will run from a steep €35 ($45) to a stunning €600 ($782) for the finals and will go on sale Feb. 1 at www.fifaworldcup.com . Issuing the tickets will also be an outrageously serious affair. Each ticket will not only look like an airline ticket, with the owner's name emblazoned across it, but will also be encoded with a microchip to guard against forgeries. (2:20 p.m. CET)

Rewarding the Righteous

One important group of people seems surprisingly absent from this week's coverage of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz: those who never wavered in their ability to sort good from evil. Where, we keep wondering, is the coverage of the righteous gentiles -- those, like Miep Gies of Anne Frank fame, who risked their lives in the hope of saving others? Certainly, there were too few of them, but shouldn't they, of all people, be included in the honors? In fact, if we had our way some of the money spent on the celebrations would be used to build plaques and monuments to them. For it is their stories that provide hope for the future. World leaders will spend the next few days excoriating the Nazi criminals and collaborators, embracing the survivors and vowing never to let such depravity occur again. Yet these people, now scattered throughout the world and in some cases still living in poverty, are the righteous few who never needed to learn such lessons. Sadly, most never got the credit they deserve. Some names are emblazoned in Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Monument, yet very few have received recognition in their hometowns. In some cases, they have been treated with spite and bile by their neighbors, simply because they found the courage others lacked. Here are two stories of Polish families, taken from the 1993 book "The Path of the Righteous:Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust."

Dr. Ludwig Fischer, the German district governor of Warsaw issued the following proclamation on Nov. 10, 1941: "Any Jew who illegally leaves the designated residential district will be punished by death. Anyone who deliberately offers refuge to such Jews or who aids them in any other manner (i.e., offering a night's lodging, food, or by taking them into vehicles of any kind, etc.) will be subject to the same punishment."

In April 1943, the Suchodolski family, who lived just outside Warsaw, heard a knock at their door. The father, Adam Suchodolski, opened the door to find a rakish-looking man, swollen from hunger and fear. Suchodolski recognized him as former neighbor, a man named Michael Shaft. Shaft had survived the Warsaw ghetto uprising and quickly the family took him in and gave him food and shelter. They also constructed a make-shift pit for him in their granary. He lived there for two years, with the family feeding him and caring for him until the village's liberation on Jan. 15, 1945. After the liberation, the villagers learned that a Jew had been hidden among them and was still there. A group of partisans stormed the Sucholdolski house in search of Michael. The family held the attackers off long enough for Michael to escape to safety. In revenge, the group ransacked the house. Michael eventually returned and eventually married the Suchodolski's daughter. In 1957, the two moved to Israel.

In July 1942, amid rumors that the Nazis were planning to liquidate all children in Poland's Lesko ghetto, Dr. Nathan Wallach begged Jozef Zwonarz, an acquaintance of his wife's, to take in the couple's three-year-old daughter. He did, by finding her a home with a forester he knew, and eventually he also agreed to help hide the girl's parents. Zwonarz was an engineer and a father of five and his house lay just between the local Gestapo headquarters and the local police station. Still, he risked his life by hiding the pair -- along with two others -- in a five by three shelter he built under his workshop. He kept his deeds secret from everyone -- even his own wife. Often he asked her to bring him his meals in his workshop and then gave the food to the foursome. The hole was so small that the four could not stand up and they spent two years lying prone, without a glimpse of sunshine. In order to pay to feed them, Zwonarz took on extra jobs. At one point, his wife accused him of having an affair because he was away so often. When the Russians began bombing in 1944, Zwonarz brought the Wallachs into his home (by then the other two had changed hiding places) and they hid with the Wallach family until liberation. After the war, some of Zwonarz's neighbors criticized him for harboring Jews. He answered, "I am not ashamed. I did what everyone should have done. They did not do it. They should be ashamed." (2:30 p.m. CET)

World Makes the Grade

Exactly one month after the tsunami in South Asia, the UN says it has received two-thirds -- or $775 million -- of the $977 million the world promised to donate for relief efforts. That's a far cry from the case of Bam, Iran, devastated by a massive earthquake in December 2003, where a scant bit -- some say only $50 million of the $1.1 billion -- promised the UN actually arrived. In that sense, it shows how much more charitable countries have become in the past year. But there are some problems, namely that some relief agencies don't have enough experience and their work is actually leading to new difficulties, says Oxfam, a major relief agency active in the operation. In particular, it says, houses had been rebuilt in Sri Lanka that are too close together and that are now causing sanitation problems. In particular, it says governments should only work with accredited agencies and ensure they have the experience to do the job. Sounds both reasonable and obvious. In all, 280,000 people are believed to have died in the tsunami. (1:50 p.m. CET)

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Freshly inaugurated Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko will have no time to savor his victory or rest from what was undoubtedly the most bitter political campaign in recent memory. (The man was poisoned, let's remember, allegedly by his pro-Russia rivals). Already, he is ablaze with promises to blot out corruption and to push Ukraine toward European Union membership. The EU may be smiling back, (how can anyone resist such a inspiring underdog -- a man who single-handedly transformed the color orange into a political statement) but it's also wringing its hands. In the past year, it has jumped from a cozy 15 members to an almost unwieldy 25. In recent months, Europeans have engaged in a collective shudder at the thought of letting Muslim Turkey join the mostly Christian club. Now Ukraine wants in, too.

Some conservative legislators hoping to finagle out of the Turkey conundrum offered up the uninspired idea of offering Turkey a "special partnership" rather than full membership. It was sort of like offering a child a stuffed cat instead of a real one and it was quickly dismissed. Now, another set of European legislators has suggested offering Ukraine -- along with Georgia and Balkan states -- close ties through a "neighborhood policy." What sort of neighbourhood does the EU have in mind? And who, we would like to know, is coming up with these ridiculous terms? On Thursday, Yushchenko will address the EU Parliament in Brussels. Maybe he can shake some straight answers out of them.