EGYPT

Egypt's fixed-line monopoly Telecom Egypt (ETEL.CA) (ETELq.L) will need to provide mobile services to compensate for declining landline subscriptions, a company executive was quoted on Monday as saying.

Brazil's CSN (CSNA3.SA) (SID.N) offered on Friday to buy Portuguese cement producer Cimpor (CPR.LS) for 3.86 billion euros ($5.6 billion) as the steelmaker slowly diversifies from its core business outside its home base.

Brazilian steelmaker CSN has bid 3.86 billion euro ($5.56 billion) cash for Portuguese cement maker Cimpor, targeting new markets like Africa and eyeing a sport-led domestic construction boom.

This diary is updated daily. New listings or amendments are marked *. All events/times provisional and in GMT (local time is GMT +2 for Egypt and Sudan).

Carbon taxes discriminate against energy producing states so OPEC members oppose them, Algeria's energy minister said, adding his country was wary of European plans for huge solar power investment in North Africa.

European leaders are courting some African, Asian and Latin American nations to counter the clout of China and the United States at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, French officials said.

Egypt is working on a $1 billion plan that will include increasing broadband penetration fourfold in the next four years to 4 million households, Communications Minister Tarek Kamel said on Tuesday.

Egypt has begun making its national archives digitally available on the Internet in Arabic, having last month registered the world's first domain name in Arabic script.

Egypt's Orascom Telecom (ORTE.CA) said it rejected regulator support for a France Telecom (FT) (FTE.PA) bid for shared asset Mobinil, which would net Orascom more than $1.6 billion but see it exit its home turf.

Egypt's telecom regulator has delayed by two months the deadline for bids for two restricted licences to supply cable, voice and Internet services, its head said on Thursday.

Egyptian earth-moving machinery was at work on the Gaza Strip border on Wednesday and an Israeli newspaper said a project was under way to build a subterranean metal wall to block Palestinian smuggling tunnels.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday there was no deal for now between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas on freeing an Israeli soldier held in Gaza.

Egypt, which plans to start its first solar power unit in 2010, said on Tuesday it wanted to expand solar power production for export but that costs of the technology would need to fall first to make it feasible.

The new chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, took office on Tuesday, replacing Egyptian diplomat Mohamed el Baradei who has been serving the agency for 12 years.

An Israeli cabinet minister said on Friday he was optimistic about prospects for a prisoner swap with Palestinians for captured soldier Gilad Shalit, suggesting that talks were still alive to achieve a deal.

U.N. nuclear watchdog governors voted on Friday to rebuke Iran for building a uranium enrichment plant in secret but Tehran dismissed the move as intimidation which would poison its negotiations with world powers.

Canadian oil and gas company TransGlobe Energy Corp said it plans to raise its 2010 capital budget by 30 percent to $46.1 million.

China must be alert to any mutation or changes in the behavior of the H1N1 swine flu virus because the far deadlier H5N1 bird flu virus is endemic in the country, a leading Chinese disease expert said.

Israel has softened its terms for a prisoner swap with Hamas and the two are nearing a deal to exchange hundreds of jailed Palestinians for an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip, officials said on Monday.

Israel's president said Sunday expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank was a marginal issue blocking resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Algeria took the final spot in the 2010 World Cup African qualifiers list after beating Egypt 1-0 in Khartoum, Sudan.