With the international release of <i>The Da Vinci Code</i>, we ask Oxford don Peter Conrad to unpick the meaning behind the global obsession and we speak to the movie’s villain Paul Bettany about God and violence.
South Africa’s indigenous people who are yearning for land are "running out of patience" and the return of the land to those dispossessed should be accelerated, an African National Congress select committee chairperson said in the policy debate on agriculture and land affairs on Friday.
The Bush administration is poised to abandon its policy of regime change for North Korea by opening negotiations on a peace treaty at the same time as it tries to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons programme, foreign policy experts said on Thursday.
Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar went back to his roots on Friday, paying homage to his mother and all women in his haunting film Volver, already hotly-tipped for the coveted Palme d’Or prize. Penélope Cruz gives a stunning performance as a young, hardworking mother who has to confront the ghosts of her past.
Upholding the city of Cape Town’s decision to revoke a contract extension for city manager Wallace Mgoqi, the Cape High Court on Friday agreed that former mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo had had no power to do so. Mfeketo’s decision ”was fatally flawed and hence unlawful and invalid”, said Judge Deon van Zyl.
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.