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The City of Cape Town believes reservists will help bolster law enforcement efforts in several communities.

The Department of Safety and Security has drawn up a policy governing the appointment the crime-fighting volunteers.

They will have the authority to search and arrest offenders.

The initiative may come into effect in September.

The department’s Anton Visser said, “The idea originated from a request from the neighbourhood watchers who indicated that they wished to participate on a more formal basis for the city’s police agencies and this will definitely bolster the patrol numbers out there.”

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)

The Department of Correctional Services said on Friday it planned to take disciplinary action against several officials who are suspected of sparking riots at the New Kimberley Correctional Centre.

They are been investigated for alleged incitement and collusion.

Inmates took warders hostage in August before setting alight mattresses and destroying telephone booths and flat-screen televisions.

Prisoners are apparently unhappy about a shortage of medical care and materials for skills training.

Spokesperson Manelisi Wolela said a department probe into the matter highlighted several shortcomings.

He said government is working on a turnaround plan for the incident ridden facility.

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)

Authorities declared an overnight curfew for Saturday after a major earthquake hit New Zealand’s second biggest city, Christchurch, bringing down power lines and bridges and wrecking roads and building facades.

"The damages are incredibly frightening. The only thing you can say it’s a miracle that no one lost their life," Prime Minister John Key told Television NZ after the quake struck with a magnitude of 7.1 from a depth of 10 kms (6 miles) at around 4.35 a.m. local time (5:35 p.m. British time Friday).

He said early estimates for the cost of repairs were around NZ$2 billion (906 million pounds).

A curfew was slapped on the central business district of Christchurch between 1900 and 0700 (8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. British time). Earlier, a formal civil defence state of emergency was imposed in the city of around 350,000 to coordinate recovery operations.

The last time authorities declared a local emergency was in late December 2007 when a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit Gisborne on New Zealand’s North Island. The earthquake caused damage to some buildings but also caused no casualties.

Christchurch city and the neighbouring small towns bore the full force of the quake, which did considerable damage to infrastructure.

"The damage is immense, it’s something that has affected every family, every household...the hit on our infrastructure, the pipes that deliver the water, the waste water, the bridges, the power supplies...has been very significant," Christchurch mayor Bob Parker told reporters.

The city’s hospital said two men had been admitted with serious injuries, one hit by a falling chimney and the other cut by glass.

Police said there were minor instances of looting, which had been quickly contained. In the suburbs many houses had broken windows, toppled chimneys, cracked walls and items thrown off shelves, with some streets and footpaths subsiding.

In late afternoon, power has been restored to 90 percent of the Christchurch urban area and 80 percent of the rural network.

Authorities were preparing to bring in water in large tankers because pumping stations were out of action and pipes broken.

RURAL EPICENTRE

The small farming community of Darfield, around 20 kms (12 miles) west of Christchurch, was near the quake’s epicentre.

The principal of the primary school there said the quake, which threw him out of bed, was terrifying.

"Our china cabinet has crashed, pictures are off the wall, anything high up has come down and the cat has gone. He is probably still heading south," Markham McCullen told the NZ Press Association.

GNS Science, the New Zealand government seismological agency, revised the quake’s magnitude to 7.1 from an original 7.4. The U.S. Geological Survey initially reported it at 7.4 but later revised its figure to 7.0.

Christchurch airport, which was shut earlier, has been reopened and is operational, while the railway network and bridges throughout the region were also being checked for damage.

Canterbury University, which has about 22,000 students, said there has been no material structural damage on its campus, but the university will be closed until Sept 13 for health and safety assessment.

The quake was felt as a long rolling motion lasting up to 40 seconds. The area was continuing to feel aftershocks as strong as magnitude 5.3.

The quake was among the 10 strongest recorded in New Zealand, which sits between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates, and records around 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which around 20 top magnitude 5.0.

The last fatal quake was in 1968 when an earthquake measuring 7.1 killed three people on the South Island’s West Coast.

New Zealand authorities have imposed a state of emergency to coordinate recovery operations in the country’s second biggest city Christchurch after a major earthquake ripped through there early on Saturday morning.

No deaths have been reported but two men have been seriously injured.

The quake – which measured around seven on the Richter scale – crushed cars, damaged roads and wrecked buildings.

The country’s Director of Civil Defence John Hamilton said looters have added to the misery.

The tremors were felt from afar.

South African expatriate Clare Baxter lives in Greymont, around 200 kilometres away from Christchurch.

“I woke up from a dead sleep. I actually thought someone was attacking us. I thought someone was shaking my bed to try and wake me up. I started screaming and I just saw my bed moving. I started panicking and my husband had to calm me down and tell me that it was just a tremor,” she said.

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)

Cosatu in Gauteng said on Friday analysts who claimed the strike is slowing down are not basing their opinions based on facts.

The provincial branch hosted a motorcade protest on the M1 highway on Friday, as well as a gathering outside the Johannesburg Securities Exchange in Sandton.

Union leaders said their members are holding out for an 8.6 percent wage increase and a R1000 housing allowance and would not accept government’s offer of a 7.5 percent increase and an R800 housing subsidy.

The strike is now in its 16th day but union numbers have dwindled at public protests, leading to speculation the mass action is losing momentum.

But Cosatu Gauteng chairperson Phutas Tseki said this is not the case.

“Currently the number of people that you see on the street may not reflect the vices of those members. It’s about the message that they have to give,” he said.

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)

The City of Tshwane said on Friday residents in the Highveld and surrounding areas south-east of John Vorster Drive and Makro in Centurion will be without power from 6am to 6pm all weekend.

Notice of the cut was issued on Friday night.

The city said this was to facilitate work on the areas 132 kilovolt electricity lines.

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)

A full blown strike in the automotive industry looks likely next week as wage talks between unions and bosses remain deadlocked.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) members employed at petrol stations and vehicle component manufacturers want a 20 percent across-the-board wage hike. They have also demanded their working hours be reduced from 45 hours to 40 hours per week.

The Retail Motor Industry and the Fuel Retailers’ Association have offered a six percent wage hike.

Workers have threatened more intensified mass action on Monday unless their demands are met.

Numsa’s Roger Piedt said, “We are going to call on all our members to start with a full-scale indefinite strike on Monday, especially in the four courts in the Western and Eastern Cape where members have returned to work on Wednesday.”

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)

Pakistan’s Taliban threatened on Friday to launch attacks in the United States and Europe "very soon."

The warning came after a renewal of militant violence in Pakistan this week that is piling pressure on a U.S.-backed government overwhelmed by the flood crisis.

"We will launch attacks in America and Europe very soon," Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior Pakistani Taliban leader and mentor of suicide bombers, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

A suicide bomber struck at a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 54 people in the second major attack this week.

The attack on the Shi’ite rally expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people came as the United States said the devastating floods are likely to hold up army offensives against Taliban insurgents.

"Unfortunately the flooding in Pakistan is probably going to delay any operations by the Pakistani army in North Waziristan for some period of time," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Afghanistan where he is visiting U.S. troops.

Senior police official Hamid Shakeel told Reuters that at least 54 people were killed and about 160 wounded in Quetta.

Dozens of dead and wounded lay in pools of blood after the blast that also engulfed vehicles in flames.

Hours later, the al Qaeda-linked Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for killings of radical Sunni clerics by Shi’ites, further challenging the unpopular civilian government. "We take pride in taking responsibility for the Quetta attack," Mehsud told Reuters.

Earlier in the day, the Taliban also claimed responsibility for bombings on Wednesday at a Shi’ite procession in the eastern city of Lahore in which at least 33 people died. These blasts were the first major attack since flood waters tore through the country. The Taliban and their allies often target religious minorities in a campaign to destabilize the government.

The Taliban said the U.S. decision to put it on its list of terrorist organizations was a sign of being scared.

Aside from its battles against homegrown Taliban, Pakistan is under intense American pressure to tackle Afghan Taliban fighters who cross the border into Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas to attack U.S.-led NATO troops.

The United States has stepped up missile strikes by pilotless drone aircraft against militant targets in Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal lands since the start of 2010. On Friday, U.S. drones fired missiles at two targets in North Waziristan tribal region, killing seven militants, including two foreigners, intelligence officials said.

Pakistan has said the army would decide when to carry out a full-fledged assault in North Waziristan, where Washington says anti-American militants enjoy safe havens, at the time it considers appropriate.

In another attack in the northwest, a suicide bomber killed one person outside a mosque of the Ahmadi sect, who consider themselves Muslims but whom Pakistan declares non-Muslims.

Attention has focused on the Pakistani Taliban again after U.S. prosecutors this week charged its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a plot that killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December.

Islamist charities, some of them linked to militant groups, have at the same time joined in the relief effort for the millions affected by the worst floods in the nation’s history.

U.S. officials are concerned that the involvement of hardline groups in flood relief will undermine the fight against militancy in Pakistan as well Afghanistan.

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Anger is spreading over the government’s sluggish response to the floods, raising the possibility of social unrest.

Pakistan is also facing economic catastrophe, with the floods causing damage the government has estimated at $43 billion, almost a quarter of the south Asian nation’s 2009 GDP.

Some relief has come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It will give Pakistan $450 million in emergency flood aid and disburse funds in September to help the economy cope with the devastation.

Talks in Washington with a delegation led by Pakistan’s Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on the terms of an $11 billion IMF loan program left him satisfied with the country’s commitment to reforms, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

Under the 2008 IMF loan program, Islamabad promised to implement tax and energy sector reforms and give full autonomy to the State Bank of Pakistan.

 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday urged Israel and the Palestinians to overcome the final obstacles to peace, saying their new talks may be a last chance to end the conflict.

Clinton, speaking to Israeli and Palestinian television one day after direct peace talks between the two sides were relaunched in Washington, said skepticism and suspicion cannot be allowed to derail the talks as has happened so many times in the past.

"First, I think that time is not on the side of either Israeli or Palestinian aspirations for security, peace and a state," Clinton said.

"It’s clear to me that the forces of growth and positive energy are in a conflict with the forces of destruction and negativity. And the United States wants to weigh in on the side of leaders and people who see this as maybe the last chance for a very long time to resolve this."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ended Thursday’s meeting with an agreement to talk again on September 14-15 and every two weeks thereafter, fast-tracking a peace push that is one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s top priorities.

Both sides accept the need for a "two-state solution" to establish an independent Palestinian state existing peacefully beside Israel.

But political analysts say there are numerous obstacles to a final deal, the first of which comes on September 26 when Israel’s partial freeze on building new Jewish settlements in occupied areas of the West Bank comes to an end.

Abbas has said he cannot continue with peace talks if settlement construction resumes but Netanyahu, whose coalition is dominated by pro-settler parties, appears reluctant to extend the moratorium.

Clinton has in the past described the rising risks both sides face, saying "the dynamics of demography, ideology and technology" threaten to produce more extremist groups with better weapons dedicating to a violent solution to the conflict.

She said it was important both sides now take concrete steps to improve conditions on the ground, particularly in areas where Palestinians and Israelis come into direct contact.

"So the checkpoints, the roadblocks, all of the daily challenges that we know affect the Palestinians, are certainly on the agenda," Clinton said.

"I think the political negotiations need to be matched with changes on the ground, and confidence-building and interactions between Israelis and Palestinians."

Clinton acknowledged the challenges ahead for both Abbas and Netanyahu, but said both leaders realized the imperative for their peoples to find a solution.

"These two men, perhaps for different reasons, may be the two who can actually do this," she said

 

Wildfires swept through dozens of villages in southern Russia, killing at least eight people and reducing more than 400 homes to smoldering ruins, officials said Friday.

The blazes in the provinces on the Volga River southeast of Moscow followed wildfires that killed at least 54 in central Russia in July and August during Russia’s worst heat wave ever recorded and prompted criticism of the government response.

Fires fanned by high winds and months of drought destroyed more than 500 buildings in at least 26 villages in Volgograd and Saratov provinces, injuring at least 17 people, Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Chernova told Reuters.

Television pictures showed smoke rising from the blackened ruins of a village of wooden houses in the Volgograd region.

"Our house has burned down, everything has burned down. There’s nothing left," said a middle-aged villager, her voice breaking as she spoke.

More than 2,500 people and at least five planes were involved in fighting the fires, the Emergencies Ministry said in a statement. Television pictures showed uniformed men running with buckets of water and shoveling dirt onto fires.

"We are working on localizing the fires, the situation is under control," Chernova said.

Most of the fires were caused by human activity, with short circuits from electricity cables to blame for others, the Emergencies Ministry said.

In a televised meeting with Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised 1 billion roubles ($34.35 million) to each of the stricken regions to house those who lost their homes.

Opposition politicians say a government-mandated restructuring gutted Russia’s forest management system during Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency, badly slowing the response to the to the fires earlier this summer.

Opinion polls, however, indicate Putin’s popularity has not declined since the heatwave hit Russia in mid-July.

 

A major earthquake hit New Zealand’s second biggest city Christchurch early on Saturday, bringing down power lines, ripping up roads and wrecking building facades, but authorities reported no deaths.

Authorities declared a formal civil defense state of emergency to coordinate recovery operations in the city, which has a population of about 350,000 people, after facades collapsed into streets, crushing cars and blocking roads.

Two men suffered serious injuries and police closed off the central business district.

The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1 and a depth of 10 kms (6 miles), hitting the South Island city and a large surrounding area of farms at around 4.35 a.m. local time (12:35 p.m. EDT Friday).

"There’s a lot of damage that I’ve been able to observe in the central city area, mainly of the old brick and masonry buildings, a number of those have got walls that have fallen into the street," Christchurch mayor Bob Parker told Radio New Zealand.

The city’s hospital said two men had been admitted with serious injuries, one hit by a falling chimney and the other cut by glass. It had also treated a few other people with broken bones, cuts and grazes.

Police said there were several instances of looting, which had been quickly contained. In the suburbs many houses had broken windows, toppled chimneys, cracked walls and items thrown off shelves.

Power was out over a large area of the city and surrounding region as circuit breakers were tripped at substations, but was being progressively restored after safety checks.

Water and sewage services were also disrupted, and there were reports of subsidence in some roads.

RURAL EPICENTRE

Officials were checking how severe the damage was in rural areas, closer to the epicenter, west of the city.

Ray O’Donnell, owner of a hotel in Darfield, a small farming community around 20 kms (12 miles) west of Christchurch, said large cracks had appeared in rural roads near the epicenter.

GNS Science, the New Zealand government seismological agency, revised its reading of the quake to magnitude 7.1 from an original 7.4. The U.S. Geological Survey initially reported it at 7.4 but later revised its figure to 7.0.

The city’s airport was shut as the runway and facilities were checked, and the railway network and bridges throughout the region were also being checked for damage.

The quake was felt as a long rolling motion lasting up to 40 seconds. The area was continuing to feel aftershocks as strong as magnitude 5.2.

"It was a real rocker, and (we’re) still getting aftershocks. (It) felt like the house was flying on a whirlwind," Tessa Hay, who lives around 12 km north of the city, told Reuters.

Because the quake occurred inland there was no danger of a tsunami. "No destructive widespread tsunami threat exists based on historical earthquake and tsunami data," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

New Zealand scientists record around 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which around 20 top magnitude 5.0.

The last fatal earthquake in the geologically active country, caught between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates, was in 1968 when an earthquake measuring 7.1 killed three people on the South Island’s West Coast.

 

Three members of Mexico’s Congress died on Friday when their small plane crashed in the Pacific beach resort of Huatulco, local media reported.

Guillermo Zavaleta and Juan Huerta, both politicians from President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN), died along with another unidentified lawmaker, Reforma newspaper said on its website.

The report could not be immediately confirmed.

 

Three men have been killed in Alberton following a side-impact accident earlier this evening.

It’s believed the three were in a vehicle towing a trailer, when the driver lost control and landed sideways across the road.

A petrol tanker then smashed into the side of the car.

Two of the men died on impact.

"[The third person] was very critical and while firemen used the jaws of life to free the man, paramedics were working fervently to try and stabilise him. He actually went into cardiac arrest. He was then transport through the Netcare Union hospital, where he died an hour later," said Netcare 911’s Chris Botha.

A major earthquake of 7.0 magnitude hit New Zealand, 30 km (20 miles) west of Christchurch early Saturday morning, causing no immediate reports of casualties but widespread damage, authorities said.

The quake, which had a depth of 33 kms (20.5 miles), was felt throughout much of the South Island and southern parts of the North Island, but did not trigger a tsunami.

Police in Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-largest city with a population of about 342,000 people, said there were many reports of broken windows, items thrown off shelves, toppled chimneys, with power and water services disrupted.

Radio New Zealand reported that the quake was felt as a long rolling motion lasting up to 40 seconds. The area was continuing to feel aftershocks.

"No destructive widespread tsunami threat exists based on historical earthquake and tsunami data," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

New Zealand scientists record around 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which around 20 top magnitude 5.0.

The last fatal earthquake in the geologically active country, caught between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates, was in 1968 when an earthquake measuring 7.1 killed three people on the South Island’s West Coast.

 

A 747-400 Boeing cargo plane operated by United Parcel Service Inc crashed in an air force base near Dubai’s airport after takeoff on Friday, the U.S. parcel delivery company said.

The United Arab Emirates civil aviation authority said the bodies of the two crew members on board were recovered.

Officials at Dubai airport, the busiest in the Middle East, were not available to comment but traffic information on its website suggested that flights were not affected by the crash.

The jet was en route to Cologne, Germany, the company said.

Smoke was billowing from the base, a Reuters eyewitness reported. Initially, Al Arabiya television had reported the plane had hit a busy highway, but later reports indicated it did not hit the road.

Al Jazeera television quoted witnesses as saying the plane was ablaze before crashing. State-run Dubai TV said the crash appeared to have been caused by a technical fault.

"I’m at the site of the crash, a deserted area... near the Dubai Al Ain road, not on the road," the station’s correspondent said by telephone.

 

Springbok scrumhalf Fourie du Preez said on Friday Francois Hougaard was the natural choice as his successor.

The youngster has been a revelation for the Boks since his first test start against the All Blacks at FNB Stadium two weeks ago.

He was named man of the match in the Boks’ 44 – 31 win over the Wallabies last weekend and will look to mimic that performance again on Saturday in Bloemfontein.

Du Preez said, “He offers us a lot and offers a lot to the Springboks. He will be the featured Bok scrumhalf for the next seven or eight years. He’s a great player. He’s a young guy that always wants to learn and I’ve got a lot of respect for that.”

He added Saturday’s clash in Bloemfontein would be a battle between two desperate teams.

“The Wallabies are, at the moment, under a lot of pressure. It’s going to be a great, high pressure game,” he said.

Du Preez said he was well on his way to a full recovery.

“I must say that’s it quite a difficult thing to watch from the side, especially when your guys are overseas. Luckily my recovery is getting better,” he said.

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)

The marriage of X Factor judge and pop singer Cheryl Cole and her England soccer player husband Ashley ended in divorce after four years on Friday.

The couple, who married in a 2006, separated in February following newspaper allegations about the Chelsea player, and Cheryl Cole filed for divorce in May.

Newspaper reports said she had cited "unreasonable behaviour of her husband" after a string of claims about his infidelity. Cheryl Cole, 27, rose to fame as a member of the band Girls Aloud which was formed from a reality TV show. She has since embarked on a solo career and is now one of Britain’s best-known celebrities because of her role on the X Factor talent show.

Defender Ashley, 29, began his career with Arsenal before moving to London rivals Chelsea in 2006. He has played more than 80 times for the national side and is expected to line up against Bulgaria in a Euro 2012 qualifier on Friday.

Cheryl was granted a "quickie divorce" at London’s High Court Family Division, the Press Association reported.

A case - titled CAC vs AC, which would indicate Cheryl Ann Cole against Ashley Cole -- was heard before District Judge Christopher Simmonds "for pronouncement of decree or order under the special procedure rule."

Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille on Friday said she is relishing the challenge of becoming Western Cape Social Development MEC.

The ID has merged with the Democratic Alliance, paving the way for de Lille’s appointment to the Western Cape Legislature.

Premier Helen Zille hugged de Lille after making the announcement that she will take up the post. She said, “The government of the Western Cape warmly welcomes you and we can carry on the work we’ve done for years in different ways together.”

De Lille said the portfolio is not entirely new to her.

“I’ve spent 30 years of my life fighting for the rights of the poor, the marginalised and the downtrodden. Social issues have always been my passion,” she said.

She is expected to be sworn in within the next two weeks.

At the same time Community Safety MEC Lennit Max has been re-assigned to the National Assembly. His position will be occupied by Albert Fritz.

Zille has kept mum on her reasons for the re-shuffle, but said Max was never in the dark about his political future.

"I discussed matters openly with Mr Max, and put the situation to him as I saw it, heard his response... made him an offer, and he accepted that offer," she said.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to a series of direct talks on Thursday, seeking to forge the framework for a U.S.-backed peace deal within a year and end a conflict that has boiled for six decades.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hosted the first session of talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, expressed confidence that this effort could succeed where so many others have failed.

President Barack Obama, aiming to resolve one of the world’s most intractable disputes, has set a goal of striking a deal within 12 months to create an independent Palestinian state that exists peacefully, side-by-side with the Jewish state.

"This will not be easy," Netanyahu said. "A true peace, a lasting peace, would be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides."

Despite widespread scepticism about the chances of this latest attempt to bring peace to the region and the shooting of Jewish settlers by Hamas militants in the West Bank this week, Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to meet again on September 14-15 with Clinton also present.

Diplomats said that meeting will take place in Egypt, which with Jordan is a key Arab backer of the current peace push.

The two sides agreed to meet every two weeks thereafter, U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell said. The agreement to continue talks marked a small step forward, although a dispute over Jewish settlements on occupied West Bank land could halt progress in its tracks.

"We are convinced that if you move forward in good faith and do not waver in your commitment to succeed on behalf of your people, we can resolve all of the core issues within one year," Clinton told Netanyahu and Abbas as the talks began.

"You have the opportunity to end this conflict and the decades of enmity between your peoples once and for all."

The two leaders, who appeared to be developing some rapport, shook hands after the formal start of the talks in an ornate State Department reception room, marking the resumption of direct dialogue that last broke off in 2008.

Both Netanyahu and Abbas have said they want a "two-state solution." But both are hobbled by domestic political challenges, putting prospects for a final deal in question.

Abbas again called on Israel to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip and stop settlement activity. But he also said the Palestinians recognized the need for security, a key Israeli demand amplified by this week’s shootings in the West Bank.

"We want to state our commitment to follow on all our ... engagements, including security and ending incitement," Abbas said.

The hardline Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, rejected the peace talks and said it would keep attacking Israelis. Four Israelis were killed and two injured in two separate attacks in the occupied West Bank this week.

A spokesman for Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said some 13 militant groups had joined forces to launch "more effective attacks" against Israel. Asked if this included suicide bombings, he said: "All options are open.

Jewish settler groups, meanwhile, vowed to push ahead with new construction in occupied areas of the West Bank, underscoring a central sticking point that threatens to derail the negotiations just weeks after they begin.

Netanyahu and Abbas appeared to be in a conciliatory public mood on Thursday. They met together with Clinton for more than an hour, and then privately one-on-one for about 90 minutes, U.S. officials said.

JEWISH SETTLEMENTS

The talks may hit their first road block when Israel’s partial freeze on building new settler homes on the West Bank is set to expire on September 26.

Abbas has said he will pull out of the talks unless Israel extends the self-imposed moratorium, a step that will be tough for Netanyahu, who heads a coalition dominated by pro-settler parties who want to start building again immediately.

Abbas on Thursday again told Netanyahu he would pull out of talks if settlement construction resumed, a senior Palestinian official said.

"We’ll try our best, but that will all be torpedoed if Mr. Netanyahu goes back to settlements," Palestinian adviser Nabil Shaath told Reuters.

But Netanyahu has appeared reluctant to extend the building moratorium.

The Palestinians say the settlements are a direct threat to their hopes to achieve a homeland on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, a goal that has eluded them since Israel was founded in 1948.

About half a million Jewish settlers live in communities scattered over the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and claim a biblical link to West Bank land occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. Major world powers regard the settlements as illegal and a threat to peace.

Mitchell said both sides agreed the talks were sensitive and would therefore release little information about details. He declined to offer specifics when asked if the settlement issue had been discussed.

But Mitchell -- who has spent months shuttling between the two sides to coax them into talks -- said they agreed the first step would be to work up a "framework agreement" to establish the parameters of a deal.

Rather than specifying the precise lines of a border, such an agreement would lay out main issues -- presumably including the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees -- in brief terms.

"Once you resolve the main issues, then it becomes easier to resolve technicalities," said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian Authority official now at American Task Force on Palestine, a Washington-based advocacy group.

The United States views the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as having a direct effect on U.S. security and diplomacy around the world. Obama, convening the talks ahead of the pivotal November U.S. congressional elections, met both leaders at the White House on Wednesday and later urged them not to let the chance for peace slip.

Bafana Bafana Coach Pitso Mosimane said on Friday a win is non-negotiable for Saturday’s 2012 African Cup of Nations qualifier against Niger.

The match will be Bafana’s first competitive match under Mosimane, who has instructed his players to give it all they’ve got.

“The Saturday evening game against Niger we all know is the qualifier and crucial game. It’s a win-at-all-costs game. We’ll be throwing everything at Niger to ensure we get those three points,” he said.

Mosimane has also warned his players not to get complacent following their recent victory in a friendly with World Cup quarter-finalists Ghana.

“We have to make sure we don’t get complacent. We have to make sure we prepare properly,” he said.

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)