(Continued from page 30)

hryvnias ($17.8 billion) in 2013.
• Some 30 investigations are now underway, and a handful of companies have been raided, but the country's top tax official contends his predecessors were part of the fraud, which is why many phantom firms acted with impunity.
• ___

• RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Soccer fields are everywhere in Rio de Janeiro. Whether professional-grade expanses of grass or improvised rectangles of dirt and rocks, they're found in high-rent neighborhoods and tucked into "favela" hillside slums of this chaotic city of 12 million people that is one of the World Cup host cities.
• In the slums, soccer is not only a favorite pastime but is seen as a way of helping keep kids out of the clutches of drug gangs. City- or charity-run "escolinhas," or soccer schools, operate in nearly all of the slums, from the Dona Marta shantytown ensconced in the middle-class Botafogo neighborhood to Mangueira, a historic favela overlooking mythical Maracana Stadium, where six World Cup matches plus the final are to be held.
• Between the kids' soccer schools and the adults who cap off their workdays with a "pelada," or informal match, competition for fields is stiff, particularly in the late afternoons and evenings.
• In Aterro do Flamengo, a sprawling park near Sugarloaf Mountain, towering streetlights illuminate much disputed fields where matches take place all through the night and into the wee hours, often at 2, 3 or 4 a.m.
• A proper field is a real luxury that most of Rio's soccer fanatics have to do without, playing anywhere they can find a sufficiently large, flat surface.
• ___

• SAO PAULO (AP) -- Before they see their teams battle on the fields, soccer fans arriving in Brazil will first have to fight their way past airport scaffolding, terminal flooding and two-hour taxi lines.
• The World Cup opens Thursday and airports are bracing to welcome the crush of international travelers flying in for soccer's premier event. Brazilian authorities insist

(Continued on page 32)