A British golf club has lifted an 88-year-old rule banning Germans and Austrians from playing on its course, newspapers reported on Saturday. Filton Golf Club near Bristol in south-west England imposed the law after nine of its members were killed in World War I, with teed-off survivors vowing that the enemy should never be allowed on the course.
The United Nations intends to send a mission to Chad next week in an attempt to allay government concerns about a proposed UN peacekeeping operation in Sudan’s western neighbour, UN officials said on Friday. The group of about 10 experts leaves during the weekend to begin talks with Chadian leaders in the capital, Ndjamena, on Tuesday.
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party remains committed to negotiations with the government despite an intensified crackdown in which many of its members have been arrested or detained, it said on Friday. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says more than 600 opposition supporters have been abducted and tortured by government agents since February.
A day after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as World Bank president under an ethics cloud, the United States faced the tough task of healing rifts with Europeans and satisfying calls that his successor be picked on merit, not just nationality. Wolfowitz’s resignation on Thursday followed pressure by European opponents.
Russia sent a signal of open defiance to the West on Friday by arresting several leading opposition figures and detaining Western journalists as they attempted to fly to a critical European Union-Russia summit. Police detained Garry Kasparov — the former world chess champion and a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin — as he tried to board a flight from Moscow.
Tunisian doctors are coming to South Africa to alleviate a local staff shortage, the Ministry of Health said on Friday. KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Northern Cape and Mpumalanga are expected to benefit, said spokesperson Sibani Mngadi. H said it was a short-term measure that would give the department time to train more staff and improve its ability to retain them.
Israel struck at Hamas targets in Gaza on Friday and threatened a more vigorous response to stop rocket attacks while Palestinian rival factions fought each other in turmoil verging on civil war. Truces agreed by Islamist Hamas and the more secular Fatah over the past week have collapsed swiftly.
In an unprecedented move, all the public-service sector unions will take joint labour action to force the government to improve a wage-increase offer. Following a meeting on Friday, all 19 unions, including Congress of South African Trade Unions and independent labour-caucus unions, decided on joint labour action.
Male circumcision should not be seen as a ”silver bullet” in fighting HIV infection, University of Cape Town researchers said in a paper published in the latest issue of the South African Medical Journal. The evidence for the preventive benefit of male circumcision is ”rather modest”, humanities student Alex Myers and co-author, public health professor Jonny Myers, said.
Zimbabwe has not officially rejected a Pan African Parliament (PAP) decision to send a team of fact-finders to the country, PAP president Gertrude Mongella said on Friday. ”There has been no official communication from the government of Zimbabwe,” she said in a briefing at the close of the PAP’s seventh ordinary session in Midrand.