Israel on Thursday postponed a planned incursion into the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun, apparently to allow negotiations to continue over the fate of a kidnapped soldier, media reported. Any further movements into northern Gaza, where troops have already rolled across the border in a bid to free the conscript, have been delayed, public radio said.
Powerful Islamists on Thursday announced an expansion of their control across Somalia, despite signing a recognition deal with the powerless transitional government aimed at maintaining a lull in the lawless African nation, officials said. In addition, they changed their name from Council of Islamic Courts to Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, which will rule the Horn of Africa nation
South and North Korea on Thursday failed to agree on forming a unified team for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, officials said. Negotiators, led by sports and government officials from the two Koreas, held a day of discussions in the North Korean border town of Kaesong.
An Air Zimbabwe plane experiencing engine failure burst two tyres during an emergency landing at the north-west resort of Victoria Falls, state-run media reported on Thursday. An unspecified number of passengers complained of minor injuries during Wednesday’s landing, according to the Herald, a government mouthpiece.
The Mail & Guardian will from next week be responsible for its own distribution, a key step in securing the newspaper’s independence, M&G chief operating officer Hoosain Karjieker said on Thursday. M&G Media, publisher of the M&G, has bought a stake in Central Media Distributors (Cape).
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Football legend Diego Maradona has hailed Wayne ”Roonino” Rooney as one of the best players in the world, comparing the England star to himself. The former Barcelona and Napoli star, who captained Argentina to World Cup victory in 1986, said Rooney was ”phenomenal” and one of the hottest talents around.
An intense three-week search for two missing Belgian schoolgirls came to a wretched end on Wednesday when their bodies were found hidden in a storm drain at the side of a railway track half a mile from the bar where they disappeared in Liège.
Americans represent 5% of the world’s population but drive almost a third of its cars, which in turn account for nearly half the carbon dioxide pumped out of exhaust pipes into the atmosphere each year, according to a report. United States cars play a disproportionate role in global warming because they are less fuel efficient than passenger vehicles used elsewhere in the world.
On the grimmest day in the Serbian calendar, Dejan recalls the epic defeat more than 600 years ago as if it occurred within the 25-year-old’s living memory. ”We were defending all of Europe, trying to save Christianity,” the Bosnian Serb says of the 14th-century battle of Kosovo, at which the Balkans fell to the Turks.
Nestled in a cradle at Moscow’s Hospital Number Two, the three-week-old baby girl has no name — or much of a future. Born to an HIV-positive mother, she was abandoned at birth and is now destined to grow up in an orphanage. In fact, the infant has a fair chance of perfect health, since two-thirds of children born of HIV-positive mothers are not themselves infected.