Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government intensified a crackdown against its political opponents on Monday, as the leader of the opposition prepared to return home to contest a run-off election. Journalists, union leaders and hundreds of political activists have been arrested since general elections in March.
The German government on Monday brushed off a verbal attack from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in which the leftist leader said Chancellor Angela Merkel was a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and German fascism. Merkel sets off for her first trip to Latin America on Tuesday.
Serbs began voting on Sunday in an election that will show whether the lure of European Union membership outweighs their anger over the Western-backed secession of Kosovo. The country is divided and the two frontrunners, the nationalist Radical Party and the pro-Western Democratic Party, will have to woo smaller parties to form a coalition.
The Swiss government has agreed to ease restrictions on the importation of potatoes following fears that Euro 2008 soccer fans could face a shortage of French fries next month. A spokesperson for the country’s department of agriculture told national radio on Wednesday that the government would allow an additional 5 000 tonnes of potatoes to be brought in.
The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world’s food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, officials said on Friday. The rights to adequate food and freedom from hunger are enshrined in international law as basic, universal human rights.
For centuries, Istanbul lured intrepid shoppers with colourful jewellery and carpets which tumbled from shops in the ancient alleyways of the Grand Bazaar. Today, the city’s affluent young middle-class is embracing a different kind of shopping experience in giant glass-and-chrome malls.
Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war ”very close”, a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday. Separately, the ”foreign minister” of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia.
A powerful cyclone that slammed into Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta triggered a massive wave that gave people nowhere to run, killing at least 15Â 000 and leaving 30Â 000 others missing, officials said on Tuesday. ”More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference.
The Asian Development Bank called on Saturday for immediate action from global governments to combat soaring food prices and pledged fresh financial aid to help feed the Asia Pacific region’s poorest nations. ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda told a news conference in Madrid, where the bank is holding its four-day annual meeting, that total lending ”could be sizeable, but not enormous”.
Diplomats failed to agree on Friday on a follow-up meeting to an acrimonious 2001 conference on racism after two weeks of difficult negotiations between Western and Islamic countries. The meeting was unable to decide on the venue or duration of a conference to chart progress in the fight against racism since the landmark conference in Durban seven years ago.
Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe accepted that the opposition’s Morgan Tsvangirai won more votes in the presidential election and will contest a run-off in a political battle that has raised fears of bloodshed. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) cried foul after Zimbabwe’s electoral body announced on Friday that he had won 47,9% of the vote
Forget frozen fish-fingers and chewy mashed potatoes. A French school has become the country’s first to hire a professional chef to cook up fresh, cheap food from local products every day. The aim? To energise listless teenage taste buds and control weight problems.
The United Nations’s new top adviser on food blamed two decades of wrong-headed policies by world powers for the food crisis sweeping the globe in a stinging interview published on his first day in office. Frenchman Olivier de Schutter told <i>Le Monde</i> newspaper the world needed to prepare for the end of "cheap food".
Israel will be urged on Friday to ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip to avert a humanitarian disaster as the Middle East ”quartet” meets to consider the state of the faltering peace process. Oxfam and five other United Kingdom aid agencies are calling for the quartet to end its ”complacency” by putting the ”highest diplomatic pressure” on Israel.
Nato on Wednesday accused Russia of ramping up tensions with neighbour Georgia and said Moscow’s rapid build-up of troops in the breakaway republic of Abkhazia threatened Georgia’s territorial integrity. The alliance called on Russia and Georgia to resolve their differences over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia’s two rebel republics.
The Zimbabwe government savoured a rare diplomatic victory on Wednesday after the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on how to respond to the country’s post-election crisis. Western countries such as former colonial power Britain had been trying to steer the council to adopt a common strategy on the situation in Zimbabwe.
Russia accused Georgia on Tuesday of planning to invade the breakaway republic of Abkhazia and said it was sending more troops to the region. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Georgia had amassed more than 1 500 troops in the mountainous Upper Kodori valley — a small but strategic enclave inside the separatist territory but controlled by Georgian forces.
Representatives of the world’s leading gas producers are discussing Russian proposals for greater cooperation, according to the Iranian Oil Ministry. Ministers from the Gas Exporting Countries Forum are meeting amid speculation that members are considering an Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec)-style club for gas producers.
North Koreans waved flags, plastic flowers and danced in the streets of Pyongyang to welcome the Olympic torch on Monday after the destitute state had promised its main benefactor China an ”astonishing” show. The global torch relay ahead of the Beijing Games in August has prompted protests against China’s rights record in Tibet.
The European Union launched the second and final test satellite for its ,3-billion rival to the United States Global Positioning System on Sunday, brushing off industry doubts over its viability. The Galileo project, Europe’s biggest single space programme, has been plagued by delays and squabbling over funding.
Germany’s Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, blamed the Bank of England on Friday for the collapse of Northern Rock and the loss of 2 000 jobs, savaging the central bank for not pumping enough liquidity into money markets last year. Unlike the central banks of the United States and European Union, the Bank of England failed to support the banking sector with vital loans, Steinbrück said.
European biodiesel producers said they were asking Brussels on Friday to impose punitive import duties on United States biodiesel but their US rivals said they would hit back with a complaint of their own. The trade in biofuels has surged due to growing demand for alternatives to fossil fuels as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
A shipment of Chinese arms bound for Zimbabwe will be recalled after South African workers refused to unload the vessel and other neighbouring countries barred it from their ports, China said on Thursday. The recall came in addition to Western pressure over Zimbabwe’s election crisis.
While the European Union has wanted a conclusion to its economic partnership agreements (EPAs) as soon as possible, the Malawian government has been staving off a deal. The deadline for EPAs at the end of last year passed without Malawi signing — in contrast to other African states.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair was left red-faced when he was caught travelling on a train without a ticket and said he had no cash to pay the fare, a report said on Wednesday. Blair was confronted by a ticket inspector as he travelled to Heathrow airport to catch a flight to the United States on Monday.
A ”silent tsunami” unleashed by costlier food threatens 100-million people, the United Nations said on Tuesday, but views differed as to how to stop it. The Asian Development Bank said there was enough food to go round, and the key was to help the poor afford it. It said Asian governments that have curbed food exports were overreacting.
Zimbabwe’s Health Minister, Dr David Parirenyatwa, armed himself with a Kalashnikov and threatened to kill opposition supporters forced to attend a political meeting unless they voted for President Robert Mugabe in a second round of the presidential election, according to witnesses.
Fortune-tellers, mediums and spiritual healers marched on Downing Street on Friday to protest against new laws they fear will lead to them being ”persecuted and prosecuted”. Organisers say that replacing the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 with new consumer-protection rules will remove key legal protection for ”genuine” mediums.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Thursday night set the seal on a new phase in Britain’s special relationship with the United States when he won ringing endorsements from the present and future generations of American leaders. US President George Bush hailed Brown as a ”good friend”.
Fears that the rapid draining of water from the top of Greenland’s ice sheet may be contributing to the rise of global sea levels have been allayed by new research. Though scientists confirmed that the water can drain away faster than Niagara Falls, it did not seem to accelerate the movement of the ice sheet into the ocean as previously thought.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter met Gaza-based leaders of Islamist Hamas in Cairo on Thursday, defying US and Israeli criticism that saw him barred from visiting the Palestinian territory. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Carter is considered to be the architect of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
World business chiefs gathered in Tokyo on Thursday to discuss ways to tackle global warming as transatlantic tensions emerged over how far industry should go to reduce emissions. The heads of the business federations of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations agreed that climate change needs serious attention.