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Wayne Rooney will travel with England to the World Cup despite being told that he will be unable to resume full training before June 14 at the earliest, four days after his country’s opening match. A scan on the Manchester United forward’s broken foot confirmed the initial prognosis that he would need about six weeks to recover.
South African Airways (SAA) has been voted the best airline based in Africa at the Official Airline of the Year Awards held in the United Kingdom. This is the sixth consecutive time that SAA has taken this award. Other awards presented to SAA this year include Best African Airline and Best International Airline for 2005.
Fighters loyal to an Islamic militia and their secular rivals manoeuvred heavily armed trucks around city streets and reinforced their positions in Somalia’s capital early on Friday, following a battle that residents said was the most widespread fighting in 14 years.
Hamas agrees with 90 % of a document compiled by jailed faction leaders and which Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas wants the Islamists to adopt, members said on Friday. Adnan Asfur, a Hamas leader in the occupied West Bank, told cross-party crisis talks that his party approved "90%" of the document.
South Africa has decided against granting asylum to white Zimbabwean opposition politician Roy Bennett, who fled his country two months ago amid fears for his life, his lawyers said on Friday. Bennett applied for asylum in South Africa in March after the police sought to question him over the discovery of an arms cache that security agents claimed was to be used to overthrow President Robert Mugabe’s government.
The sole surviving attacker of the Beslan school siege of September 2004 was found guilty today of murder, hostage taking and terrorism but was spared the death penalty because of Russia’s current moratorium on executions. The court found Nurpashi Kulayev guilty of taking hostages, causing the deaths of 330 people and inflicting material damage of around ,3-million.
Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper The Times announced on Friday it will launch a United States edition next month as part of a push to make the paper an international brand. The US edition will go on sale on 6 June via subscription and at more than 2 000 retail outlets across New York and New Jersey.
The possibility of a nationwide taxi strike cannot be ruled out should the Department of Transport fail to comply with taxi owners’ demands over operating permits, a spokesperson said on Friday. South African National Taxi Council members marched to the Union Buildings to hand over a memorandum to the minister of transport.
Gunmen in Baghdad killed the coach of the Iraqi national tennis team and two players, reportedly for wearing Western-style tennis shorts, an Iraqi Olympic official said on Friday. The coach, Hussein Ahmed Rashid, was murdered along with two of his players, Nasser Ali Hatem and Wissam Adel Auda, outside his home in the capital’s southern al-Saidiyah neighbourhood.
Hamza El Din, a musician and composer who helped popularise ancient traditional songs from North Africa, has died. He was 76. El Din died on Monday at Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, said hospital spokesperson Carolyn Kemp. His wife, Nadra, told The New York Times the cause of death was complications after surgery.