President Robert Mugabe is expected to read the riot act to Zanu-PF Bulawayo provincial leaders on Friday over simmering dissent within his party. Mugabe is due to meet senior Zanu-PF Bulawayo politicians to tackle the infighting which intensified after Sunday’s controversial nomination of new party leaders.

It was the message they hoped never to hear again, but when they did, the villagers of Kalambairo did not hesitate: they fled. Warned that soldiers were on the way, the 1 900 inhabitants hid in wooded hills overlooking the village and endured the familiar spectacle of livestock being stolen, the water supply being cut and homes being burned.

The case against a man charged with the murder of a Lord of the Dance production member was postponed on Thursday for a week. Jubulani Moyo (23) was arrested earlier this week for the murder of Darryl Kempster. Kempster, a British citizen, was robbed of his laptop and shot and killed on June 27 this year as he walked from the Nelson Mandela theatre to the Parktonian Hotel in the city.

Two more of America’s top spies were reported on Thursday to be leaving the CIA, as an attempt to fix the troubled agency appeared increasingly to be dividing its ranks and driving out its most experienced officials. The latest departures were undercover operatives, and so were not named in Thursday’s press reports, which described them as ”barons” in the top level of the CIA’s clandestine service.

Hollywood continued its long tradition of serving up turkeys for the Thanksgiving holiday with the release on Thursday of Oliver Stone’s sword-and-sandal epic Alexander. The film was well and truly roasted by critics, who were clearly irritated at having to spend nearly three hours sitting through the -million epic.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Thursday accused the United States and the European Union of encouraging ”mayhem” on the streets of Ukraine, and warned them against interfering further in the current election crisis. Speaking after a failed EU-Russia summit in the Hague, he told the international community to let the Ukrainian issue be decided in the courts.

Mahmoud Abbas, who has emerged as the principal Palestinian leader following the death of Yasser Arafat, on Thursday said he intends to bring a complete and unconditional end to Palestinian violence. Abbas, the leader of the politically dominant Fatah movement in the occupied territories, declared the demise of the Palestinian uprising, the intifada.