Your business:
Business & Organisations
AFP’s in-depth reporting ensures complete coverage of general news from around the world: politics, diplomacy, business, social, environment, sport, people, science, culture, offbeat, entertainment, fashion, lifestyle, health...
Global coverage in real time 24 hours a day
Arabs agree to Israel-Palestinian talks
07/29 | 15:43 GMT
CAIRO (AFP) - Arab officials agreed in principle on Thursday to the holding of direct Middle East peace negotiations and left it up to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to decide when to start talks with Israel.
CAIRO (AFP) - Arab officials agreed in principle on Thursday to the holding of direct Middle East peace negotiations and left it up to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to decide when to start talks with Israel.
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been under pressure from Washington to move forward, and the announcement prompted Netanyahu to express openness to starting talks "in the next few days."
Qatari prime minister and foreign minister Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani made the announcement after chairing a meeting of foreign ministers and representatives in Cairo.
He spoke in response to a question about whether they had given Abbas a green light to start talks.
"I'll be clear. There is an agreement but with the understanding of what will be discussed and how the direct negotiations will be conducted. And we will leave the assessment of the position to the Palestinian president as to when the conditions allow the beginning of such negotiations," he said.
Sheikh Hamad said the meeting agreed to send a letter to US President Barack Obama that outlined "our understanding to any peace process or direct negotiations.¨
It discussed placing a schedule on the talks and "fixed principles" relating to a near agreement during talks between former Israeli premier Ehud Barak and the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa said written guarantees were required for direct talks.
There "must be written guarantees ... and the negotiations should be serious and final status talks," he said.
In Jerusalem, a statement from Netanyahu's office said: "In response to the Arab League decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he is ready to start, already in the next few days, direct and frank talks with the Palestinian Authority.
"The prime minister added that through direct negotiations it is possible to reach a peace agreement between the two nations in the near future."
The meeting had been expected to back Abbas's condition that Israel guarantee a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 war borders between the Jewish state and east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Abbas also wants an end to settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel acceded to US pressure to limit settlement building in the West Bank until September, when a moratorium ends.
The Palestinian leader repeated his conditions on the eve of the meeting in an interview with Egyptian newspaper editors, the official Egyptian MENA news agency reported on Thursday.
Abbas said he would tell the meeting that if there was "no serious vision relating to the 1967 borders and an end to settlements then I cannot enter direct negotiations.
"When I receive the demanded guarantees which are the acceptance of the 1967 borders and an end to settlements ... I will immediately enter negotiations," MENA quoted Abbas as saying.
He said he was facing "pressures I have never faced before in my life from the American administration and the European Union and the secretary general of the United Nations," and added he would step down if he saw "matters are not going well."
Netanyahu has said he is willing to meet Abbas to discuss all the core issues of the decades-old conflict, and has accused the Palestinians of avoiding engaging in direct talks.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told an Arab newspaper this week that Obama told the Palestinians in a letter that he will help found a Palestinian state only if they begin direct talks with Israel.
Abbas suspended direct negotiations with Israel after its offensive on the Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in December 2008 in response to rocket fire.
He has demanded that the talks pick up from where he left off with then prime minister Ehud Olmert, a condition rejected by Netanyahu's government.
The Palestinians say Netanyahu has yet to respond to the proposal, and the prime minister has previously said Israeli forces must remain in the strategic Jordan Valley after any peace deal to prevent weapons smuggling.
In an indication of the domestic pressure Abbas faces, his own Fatah party on Thursday told him not to join direct talks with Netanyahu's right-wing government without showing progress in the US-brokered indirect talks.
Volume
5000 stories per day in six languages
Languages
Arabic, English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish
Global coverage in real time 24 hours a day
Rich coverage
Reportage, investigation and interviews from AFP’s network of journalists and freelancers. News stories are sorted, verified and published according to their importance. Regional and global analysis.
News Agenda
Regional news agendas on the following day’s big news stories. An international monthly news agenda is produced each week. Updated news agendas are produced several times each day.
Here are some examples
Government to scrap fixed retirement at 65
07/29 | 12:06 GMT
LONDON (AFP) - Britain will scrap a rule under which people can be forced to retire at the age of 65, the government said Thursday.
LONDON (AFP) - Britain will scrap a rule under which people can be forced to retire at the age of 65, the government said Thursday.
The move, which comes into effect from October 2011, is expected to mean more people will work for longer, boosting Britain's strained public finances by paying more tax and not claiming the state pension.
While employers in a few sectors will still be able to enforce a compulsory retirement age, the announcement is part of a growing trend in Europe to encourage people to work for longer in the face of an ageing population.
"Many older people want to work after age 65 and have a wealth of skills and experience that are not being used," Pensions Minister Steve Webb said.
"We want to get rid of the default retirement age so that if they want to work they can do so.
"By spending longer in the workforce, they can also have a better pension in retirement."
Webb added there could be exceptions for jobs like air traffic controllers and police officers where performance can be linked to age.
Earlier this month, the European Commission urged European governments to raise their retirement ages because the current system was "simply not sustainable".
France has announced measures to raise its retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018, which are fiercely disputed by trade unions. Italy is raising its retirement age from 57 to 61 by 2013.
The coalition has said it will "reinvigorate" the pensions system as it implements tough public sector cuts in a bid to reduce a record deficit.
The average British man retires aged 64.6 years and the average woman at 61.9 years, according to official statistics from 2008.
This compares to 65 years for workers in the United States and 70 years in Japan.
Men in Britain can currently claim the state pension from the age of 65 and women from the age of 60.
Thursday's annoucement was welcomed by the Trades Union Congress but criticised by some business groups, who said it would create uncertainty for employers and staff.
UK News
Government to scrap fixed retirement at ...Stemcells coaxed to rebuild bone, cartilage
07/29 | 11:21 GMT
PARIS (AFP) - Scientists have shown for the first time that it may be possible to replace a human hip or knee with a joint grown naturally inside the body using the patient's stem cells.
PARIS (AFP) - Scientists have shown for the first time that it may be possible to replace a human hip or knee with a joint grown naturally inside the body using the patient's stem cells.
In experiments on rabbits, the researchers coaxed the animals' stem cells to rebuild the bone and cartilage of a missing leg joint, according to a study published on Thursday.
"This is the first time an entire joint surface was regenerated with return of functions including weight bearing and locomotion," lead researcher Jeremy Mao, a professor at Columbia University Medical Center, said in a statement.
Naturally-grown joints would likely last longer than the current generation of artificial mechanisms, he said.
With ageing populations and many people under 65 requiring replacement surgery, there is a real danger patients will outlive metallic joints and require a second gruelling operation late in life.
In the experiments, Mao and colleagues removed the forelimb thigh joint of 10 rabbits, and then implanted a kind of scaffolding made of biologically compatible materials.
A naturally-occurring substance that stimulates cell growth then cued the rabbits' stemcells to go to the site of the missing joint and regenerate both cartilage and bone in two distinct layers.
Within four weeks, the animals resumed normal movements -- a medical first, the researchers reported in the British medical journal The Lancet.
The fact that the regenerated limb joint was created from the stem cells in the host animal -- rather than being harvested and then cultivated outside the body -- is also unprecedented, they said.
This new procedure "may ultimately lead to clinical applications," said Mao. "In patients who need the knee, shoulder, hip or finger joints regenerated, the rabbit model provides a proof of principle."
But a number of scientific and regulatory issues remain before the procedure can be tested on humans, he said.
For hip replacements, for example, recovery in people will be more difficult because humans carry all their weight on two legs.
Many patients are also likely to have existing conditions and drug regimens that could adversely affect the growth of new joints.
Some patients -- especially elderly people with diabetes -- will not have the same capacity for natural regeneration, cautioned Patrick Warnke of Australia's Bond University in a commentary, also in The Lancet.
The period of immobility while a joint regenerates also presents its own risks.
"The optimum way to grow a biological joint remains a controversy," Warnke said.
But, he added, the new research "offers a promising insight into what might be on the horizon."
As populations age in rich nations, the demand for total joint replacements has sky-rocketed.
In the United States, more than 200,000 patients received total hip replacements in 2006, and nearly half a million got new knee joints, according to the US Nationwide Inpatient Sample database of hospital inpatient stays.
If these trends continue, an estimated 600,000 hip replacements and 1.4 million knee replacements will be carried out in 2015.
The United States accounts for 50 percent total procedures worldwide, with Europe accounting for 30 percent, according to Datamonitor.
An ageing population and increased incidence of obesity are primary causes for the increase in joint replacements.
Health/Medicine
Stemcells coaxed to rebuild bone, ...Morgan sparks England revival in cricket Test
07/29 | 14:58 GMT
NOTTINGHAM, England (AFP) - Eoin Morgan led England to 190 for four at tea after Pakistan took two wickets in quick succession on the first day of the first Test at Trent Bridge here on Thursday.
NOTTINGHAM, England (AFP) - Eoin Morgan led England to 190 for four at tea after Pakistan took two wickets in quick succession on the first day of the first Test at Trent Bridge here on Thursday.
England, who won the toss, were in trouble at 118 for four shortly after lunch, with Kevin Pietersen out for nine in his first match since injuring his thigh in a one-day international against Australia at Lord's on July 3.
But former Ireland left-hander Morgan hit back with 44 not out featuring nine boundaries and together with Paul Collingwood (27 not out) had so far shared an unbroken stand of 72.
In a series where the Decision Review System (DRS) was being used in England for the first time, Pakistan wasted both their two permitted unsuccessful challenges on appeals by Mohammad Asif for lbw and caught behind against Pietersen on one and five.
But Asif then bowled Pietersen, leaving a gap between bat and pad, off the inside edge.
England's other South Africa-born batsman, Jonathan Trott, had added just three to his lunchtime 35 when he padded up to an inswinger from Aamer.
Trott, succcessful with a previous referral, asked for New Zealand umpire Tony Hill's lbw verdict to be reviewed.
But replays suggested the ball was clipping the top of the stumps and Trott was out, with England 118 for four.
And there was a fresh flashpoint when wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal appealed for a catch against Morgan, on five, off the bowling of left-arm fast bowler Mohammad Aamer.
But even before the third umpire ruled in Morgan's favour, crowd jeers were ringing round Trent Bridge as replays on the giant screen showed the ball had clearly bounced into Kamran Akmal's gloves.
It took Collingwood 30 balls to score his first four but then two came in as many Umar Gul deliveries, courtesy of a couple of square cuts.
Morgan then cover-drove and glanced off-spinner Shoaib Malik for fours.
Both batsmen cashed in against Pakistan's slow bowlers and Morgan made it six boundaries for England in 12 deliveries with a trademark reverse sweep off leg-spinner Danish Kaneria.
Before lunch Aamer, who took seven wickets in Pakistan's dramatic three-wicket second Test win over Australia at Headingley last week, had Alastair Cook caught at first slip and had England captain Andrew Strauss caught behind for 45.
Earlier, Strauss had a huge reprieve when, on 15, he edged an outswinger from the 18-year-old Aamer only for Kamran Akmal to drop the routine chance.
Cook struggled in overcast conditions similar to those in which Pakistan bowled Australia out for just 88 in the first innings at Headingley and on eight edged Aamer to first slip Imran Farhat.
Trott then became the first batsman to use DRS in England when, on 13, he given out, lbw to Kaneria, by de Silva. As replays showed Trott had got an inside edge, de Silva reversed his original verdict.
But Aamer did have Strauss, playing loosely outside off-stump, eventually caught behind by Kamran Akmal to end a second-wicket stand of 51.
Pakistan players wore black armbands in memory of the 152 people killed in after an airplane crashed near the capital city of Islamabad on Wednesday.
