The Lebanese army shelled al-Qaeda-inspired militants cornered in small parts of a Palestinian refugee camp on Thursday and security sources said two more soldiers were killed in the fighting. They said one soldier was killed on Wednesday and the body of another was pulled from rubble in Nahr al-Bared camp, raising the army toll to 111 dead.
Zimbabwean police summoned a leader of the country’s main union organisation to answer charges on Thursday that he called for President Robert Mugabe’s overthrow in a May Day speech, the movement said. A spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions confirmed secretary general Wellington Chibebe had gone to Harare’s main police station.
It was 3am when armed security agents hammered on the door of Khairat al-Shater’s flat in Nasser City; his daughter Zahra could only watch and comfort her distraught children while her father and husband, Ayman, were detained as Hosni Mubarak’s latest crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood got under way.
United Nations officials issued warnings on Thursday about the collapse of Gaza’s economy and called on the international community to open crossing points for trade. At least 68 000 Palestinians have lost their jobs in the past month since Israel closed the crossings out of the narrow, highly populated strip of land.
The South African flag will once again fly high at the next edition of the world’s premier sailing event, the America’s Cup, following the lodging of a second challenge in Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday. Team Shosholoza founder and managing director Captain Salvatore Sarno confirmed by telephone on Wednesday night that he had personally lodged a notice of entry.
The City of Cape Town has to spend millions of rands every year to clean water from the city’s main supply dam, Theewaterskloof, which has become polluted by massive numbers of illegally introduced alien fish. The fish, particularly carp and barbel, are spreading throughout the province’s dams and rivers.
Take the gecko, famed for its ability to scale walls, and the mussel, renowned for its clamping quality, and you have the inspirations for a superglue that can stick, unstick and stick again. The glue, dubbed "geckel", can have innumerable uses, say the inventors, whose research is published in <i>Nature</i>, the British journal.
Taxi violence may soon be snuffed out through technology, if a pilot project next month to monitor vehicles by satellite to eradicate pirate operators succeeds, the Cape Times reported on its website on Thursday. The system will first be rolled out on a single route between Pretoria and Johannesburg.
Prospects for the struggling dairy-farming sector are looking better following a decision by milk processors to raise prices this year, according to a farmers’ representative body. Milk Producers’ Organisation MD Etienne Terre’Blanche said the current milk shortage occurred after processors slashed prices from early 2005.
The JSE was slightly higher at noon on Thursday as miners gained on sustained strength in precious metals with banks in focus on vague talk that Standard Chartered Bank might make a buy-out offer for Nedbank. At midday, the all-share index was up 0,32%. Resources gained 0,48% and the gold- and platinum-mining indices added 0,57% and 1,75% respectively.