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.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has donated 100 computers to 10 schools in Harare ahead of a parliamentary by-election in a key suburb, reports said on Friday. Voters in the low-income suburb of Budiriro are due to go to the polls on Saturday to fill a parliamentary seat left vacant by the death of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change MP Gilbert Shoko.
Somewhere in Brazil there is a man called Renato who had the chance to own 25% of Ronaldinho. A former player with Gremio in the southern city of Porto Alegre, Renato lent a sum of money — about £75 000 — to his old club, which had fallen on hard times. And when they proved unable to repay him in cash, they offered him a quarter-share in one of the promising local boys.
The Bulls have reached the semifinals of the Super 14 for the second successive season. They have been demonstrably the best team in South Africa in all competitions for about three years, and yet beyond their immediate blue-clad family of support, no one loves them. Why?