Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will on Sunday meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Egypt, the highest-level such contact since radical faction Hamas won a January election. "Mrs Livni and Mr Abbas will meet on Sunday [at a meeting] in which Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres will participate," foreign ministry spokesperson Mark Regev said.
South Africa’s road network, conservatively estimated to be worth R550-billion, is deteriorating at an alarming rate according to the South African Road Federation (Sarf). Sarf says that the under-funding of road maintenance over the past 25 years is the prime cause of the problem.
Government is considering placing an upper limit on student tuition fees in the public higher education system, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Friday. Widening access to higher education has led to pressing cost challenges, she told MPs in the National Assembly during debate on her budget vote.
After more than a decade of talking about it, movie theatres and studios are finally rolling out digital projectors that show sharper, brighter images without cracks, pops or hisses. This weekend, Sony Electronics will enter the field with a projector that displays the sharpest resolution envisioned under a set of standards issued for digital cinema.
A leader of an Islamist group blamed for a spate of deadly attacks in tourist resorts in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula over the past two years was killed in an explosion on Friday, a security source said. Arafat Ouda Ali died as a device he tried to hurl at security forces closing in on his hideout on a Rafah farm exploded in his face.
Arch-rival Horn of Africa neighbours Ethiopia and Eritrea blamed each other on Friday for the failure of talks aimed at ending the deadlock over their tense border that many fear could spark a new war. The two countries accused each other of holding to longstanding inflexible positions even as mediators attempted to negotiate a breakthrough.
Israel and South Africa carried out a nuclear test on an offshore platform in the northern Antarctic in 1979, according to a newly disclosed United States document, <i>Yediot Aharonot</i> newspaper said on Friday. The document says a mystery explosion detected on September 22 1979 by a US satellite was a nuclear test.
Polio has returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time in six years, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced on Friday. WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib told reporters that a two-and-a-half year old girl had been paralysed by a strain of the polio virus that had been carried from India via Angola.
The Wellington Hurricanes became the first team to qualify for the Super 14 rugby final when a massive 50m penalty by Jimmy Gopperth secured a tough 16-14 win over the New South Wales Waratahs on Friday. They must now wait for the outcome of Saturday’s match between defending champions the Crusaders and the Bulls to determine who they will play in the final.
Zimbabwe immigration authorities on Friday barred top South African labour leader Zwelinzima Vavi from entering the country, immediately putting him back on a South African Airways plane that had brought him to Harare International airport. Vavi, who is general secretary of the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), is an outspoken critic of President Robert Mugabe’s controversial rule.