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.
At least four people were killed and seven missing after a plane crashed on Wednesday into the Atlantic Ocean off the Equatorial Guinea island of Annobon, the Malabo government announced. There was no confirmation of earlier reports that said that leaders of the ruling party were on board the plane when it crashed.
South Africa will not interfere with a shipment of weapons aboard a Chinese ship that is destined for Zimbabwe, government communications head Themba Maseko said on Thursday. All South African authorities can do is to make sure that ”all proper administrative processes” are followed.
Italians on Tuesday got their first taste of life under their new government as Silvio Berlusconi moved to appease the newly powerful Northern League with pledges of lower taxes, more police and camps for jobless foreigners. ”One of the things to do is to close the frontiers,” he said in a TV interview.
Rescue workers have recovered 21 bodies from the crash site in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where a passenger plane smashed into a crowded market on take-off, the chairperson of the airline said late on Tuesday — but they have so far been unable to establish if any of the plane’s passengers were among the victims.
A passenger plane carrying 85 people crashed into a crowded neighbourhood in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) town of Goma on Tuesday, and only six survivors have been found so far, government officials said. Smoke engulfed the charred ruins of the aircraft, which appeared to have broken in two.
Silvio Berlusconi has won his third Italian election with a bigger-than-expected swing to the centre right, but the media magnate said it would not be easy to solve deep economic problems. Votes were still being counted on Tuesday, but with Berlusconi’s victory clear on Monday evening, centre-left leader Walter Veltroni called to concede defeat.
Newly appointed Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Monday urged the new government, comprising former rivals, to work together to enhance reconciliation in the deeply divided nation. ”The process of reconciliation has begun and the Cabinet must speak in one voice,” Odinga told reporters.
Italians have a last chance to vote on Monday in a two-day parliamentary election that could restore conservative billionaire Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister of a country on the brink of recession. Many Italians doubt, however, that Italy’s 62nd government since World War II will revive the economy.
Fictional robots always have a personality: Marvin was paranoid, C-3PO was fussy and HAL 9000 was murderous. But reality is disappointingly different. Sophisticated enough to assemble cars and assist during complex surgery, modern robots are dumb automatons, incapable of striking up relationships with humans. But that could soon change.
Argentine police mobilised on Friday to guard the Olympic torch through Buenos Aires, bracing for protests against the human rights record of Olympic Games host China. The torch arrived in Argentina on Thursday to little fanfare. It will be carried past the country’s pink presidential palace and along the city’s broad avenues.
Pressure mounted on Thursday on Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and prime minister-designate Raila Odinga to resume coalition talks amid warnings that a delay was fomenting violence. The pair met last on Sunday and failed to agree on a unity government, a key step in implementing a power-sharing deal.
Thousands of rebels massed in Sudan are about to attack neighbouring Chad in an attempt to destabilise it, Chad’s defence minister said on Wednesday. ”Once again the regime of [Sudanese President] Omar al-Bashir … is massing, training and heavily arming thousands of its mercenaries,” said Defence Minister Mahamat Ali Abdallah.
Kenyan leaders were on Wednesday under pressure to resume talks on forming a coalition government in a bid to end a devastating political crisis, a day after hundreds demonstrated to demand a new Cabinet. The much-delayed unveiling of a national-unity government is a key step in implementing a power-sharing deal aimed at quelling deadly violence.
A German orchestra has dropped a composition from its programme after its members claimed the music was so loud that it gave them ear problems and headaches. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BR) said it had little choice but to drop the world premiere of Swedish-Israeli composer Dror Feiler’s Halat Hisar (State of Siege).
Soaring prices of basic foodstuffs could cause a "humanitarian tsunami" in Africa, European Union Development Commissioner Louis Michel warned on Tuesday. "A world food crisis is emerging, less visible than the oil [price] crisis, but with the potential effect of real economic and humanitarian tsunami in Africa," Michel said in a statement.
Zimbabwe awaited a key court ruling on Tuesday, which could order an end to the 10-day wait for presidential election results as pressure on veteran leader Robert Mugabe mounts. The High Court was due to rule on a petition by the opposition demanding the electoral commission immediately declare the outcome of the March 29 polls.
One of the world’s leading climate scientists warns on Monday that the European Union and its international partners must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem.
Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party on Friday decided President Robert Mugabe should contest a run-off vote against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai if neither wins a majority in the presidential election. The party politburo met for about five hours to discuss Mugabe’s next move in facing the greatest crisis of his 28-year rule.
More than 160 nations agreed in Bangkok on Friday to consider how to reduce rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions from air and sea travel, in an early move towards a new global-warming treaty. The accord was the first hurdle in succeeding the Kyoto agreement in the fight against climate change.
For Koula Hadjipieris and Hassan Chirakli the wall of hate came down at 10am on Thursday. That’s when Hadjipieris called her lifelong Turkish Cypriot friend and said: ”I’m coming over.” They were words that in Nicosia, the last divided capital in Europe, Chirakli had hoped to hear all his adult life.
Greek and Turkish Cypriots on Thursday pulled down barricades that have separated them for half a century, reopening Ledra Street, a potent symbol of Cyprus’s ethnic partition. The highly symbolic gesture comes as the two communities prepare talks to end the Mediterranean island’s division.
Air travel is booming as the world’s population grows and fares fall, but its impact on the Earth’s sensitive climate must be taken into account in any new global-warming pact, green groups say. More than 900 delegates flew into Bangkok this week for a meeting on global warming, spewing about 4 181 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.