Beirut  - A cargo ship carrying Lebanese activists and supplies will set sail on January 3 for the besieged Gaza Strip in an attempt to break an Israeli blockade, organizers said Tuesday.

The European-flagged ship will carry power generators and food to Gaza. It will sail from southern Lebanon to the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus before heading to Gaza, one of the organizers, Hani Suleiman, a lawyer and professor, said.

The passengers include activists from civil society groups as well as journalists, Suleiman said.

Cairo  - Hollywood star Nicholas Cage will play late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in an Egyptian television series, according to media reports Tuesday.

Cage plans to lose six kilograms before he starts shooting for the series, for which he's getting paid 40 million dollars, al-Arabiya TV reported.

Egyptian writer Anis al-Degheidy, who wrote the series, recently announced that shooting was to start mid-2009. The show is to be directed by Lebanese Youssef Sharaf.

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Wellington  - New Zealand's Foreign Minister Murray McCully rejected on Wednesday accusations that the country's top diplomat in Fiji, who has been expelled by the island state's military ruler, had broken the rules of diplomatic behaviour.

Fiji told New Zealand's Acting High Commissioner Caroline McDonald on Tuesday to leave the capital Suva in a week, saying she had ignored the military government, which seized power two years ago, and associated only with opposition politicians.

Cairo - Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa on Tuesday renewed his call for an Arab-Iranian dialogue, describing it as "extremely important".

Mussa said Arabs and Iranians should sit together to try to resolve their regional disputes. He said he was amazed that a dialogue between the West and Iran existed, while there was no such dialogue between the Arab states and Iran.

Los Angeles  - Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) postponed a strike authorization vote after dozens of leading actors came out against the potentially devastating work stoppage.

The postponement was announced late Monday in an email to SAG board members, in which SAG Executive Director Doug Allen said he and SAG President Alan Rosenberg had decided to push back the strike referendum to "address the unfortunate division and restore consensus," the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.