Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader pledged on Wednesday to revamp the country’s crumbling economy by introducing a new currency within six months if he wrests the presidency from Robert Mugabe in weekend elections. ”The economy is dead,” Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, told thousands of supporters in Murewa.
Al-Jazeera English, the global news channel launched as a sibling to the Arab-language service, has suffered its most high-profile defections yet amid growing unease among staff about its future. Steve Clark, a former senior executive at ITN and Sky News and a driving force behind the launch of al-Jazeera English, resigned at the end of last week.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe warned the opposition on Friday against Kenyan-style violence if they lose next week’s election, saying security forces stood ready to crush such protests. The 84-year-old leader faces a stiff challenge from former ally Simba Makoni and long time rival Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
The world’s glaciers are melting faster than at any time since records began, threatening catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people and their eco-systems. The details are revealed in the latest report from the World Glacier Monitoring Service and will add to growing alarm about the rise in sea levels and increased instances of flooding, avalanches and drought.
Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant party scrambled on Wednesday to secure a seamless transfer of power after its firebrand leader, Ian Paisley, announced his departure, drawing tributes from all sides. Paisley said on Tuesday he would step down as Democratic Unionist Party head in May.
Britain said on Tuesday it would support a ban on a tour next year by the Zimbabwe cricket team in protest at President Robert Mugabe’s rule, but the decision was up to the sport’s authorities. The BBC’s Inside Sport said the government was looking at several options to stop next year’s tour.
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/ 27 February 2008
Protesters scaled the roof of Britain’s Parliament in a major security breach on Wednesday and threatened further direct action against government plans to expand London’s Heathrow airport. Environmental protesters from the ”Plane Stupid” group scaled the Houses of Parliament.
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/ 22 February 2008
Britain said for the first time on Thursday the United States had used British territory to transfer terrorism suspects, in an embarrassing apology that corrected previous denials. Allegations of covert US activities as part of the ”war on terror” have circulated for years.
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/ 20 February 2008
Tony Blair’s hopes of becoming Europe’s first president are running into mounting opposition across the European Union, with Germany determined to stymie the former prime minister. ”There was surprise in Berlin when Blair’s name came up so soon,” said a European ambassador.
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/ 26 January 2008
Women may be smashing glass ceilings on Wall Street, but a walk down the corridors of the World Economic Forum would have you fooled. Organisers say female delegates make up 17% of the hundreds of policymakers and business leaders that gathered in Davos this week — less than one in five.
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/ 18 December 2007
Palestinians were given a powerful signal of international and Arab support for an independent state on Monday night, with ,4-billion in aid to revive their moribund economy and bolster renewed but faltering peace negotiations with Israel.
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/ 14 December 2007
Israel must ease restrictions on the Palestinians if efforts led by Tony Blair to boost the Palestinian economy are to be successful, the World Bank and Oxfam said on Thursday. Next Monday Blair, representing the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, is to chair a conference in Paris of 90 countries and organisations.
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/ 1 December 2007
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe launched a new attack on Britain on Friday after it failed to prevent him being invited to a European Union summit next month, telling London to stop interfering in its former colony. He also thanked fellow African heads of state for their diplomatic support in what he called an ”onslaught” by Britain and its allies.
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/ 28 November 2007
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown faces a grilling in Parliament on Wednesday over the funding row that has engulfed the Labour party. Despite pledging to return the donations, Brown will face calls to explain what he knew about the £600 000 that property developer David Abrahams donated through intermediaries.
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/ 22 November 2007
Senior officials knew about a decision to include financial details of millions of Britons on computer discs that then went missing in the mail, British opposition politicians said on Thursday. Citing an internal email, members of the Conservative Party said blame for the scandal went higher than just the junior civil servant so far blamed by the government.
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/ 20 November 2007
A meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders has failed to produce a joint declaration for a Middle East summit due next week in the United States, after they could not resolve key differences. The declaration that diplomats originally expected Israel and the Palestinians to agree on has yet to be agreed.
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/ 19 November 2007
Zimbabwe said on Monday it had put its military on high alert against a possible British invasion after the former armed forces chief of its old colonial master revealed London had considered such a move. "We are aware of plans by Britain to invade our country and assassinate our leaders," Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said.
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/ 18 November 2007
Zimbabwe’s government on Sunday accused Britain of plotting to invade the Southern African state and to kill President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe’s spokesperson, George Charamba, said Harare was ”well aware” that former British prime minister Tony Blair had considered plans for an invasion of Zimbabwe.
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/ 1 November 2007
A failed British bid to exclude Robert Mugabe from an upcoming European summit played straight into the hands of the Zimbabwean president, who gained instinctive support from his African peers, analysts said. Portugal said on Wednesday that invitations would be issued to all African states who would be free to decide themselves on the composition of their delegation.
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/ 22 October 2007
World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report that also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown. Global oil production is currently about 81-million barrels a day — the report expects that to fall to 39-million by 2030.
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/ 19 October 2007
Former British prime minister Tony Blair would be a good choice as the European Union’s first full-time president, French and British leaders said on Friday while stressing that the job is not yet on offer. Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, praised Blair’s current role as international Middle East envoy, and said he would be a strong candidate for any similar high-profile role.
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/ 15 October 2007
The European Union should tell British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to ”shut up” on democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe ahead of an Africa-EU summit in December, Zimbabwe’s information minister said on Monday. Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said that Brown had no right to lecture Zimbabwe when he himself was ”running away” with power.
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/ 14 October 2007
The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has launched a rare attack on Gordon Brown ahead of the crucial Lisbon summit on the European Union reform treaty this week, warning that the British Prime Minister is putting the international fight against terrorism at risk.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ruled out an early election on Saturday in what the opposition Conservatives called a humiliating retreat after polls showed his lead over them had evaporated. Brown, who took over from Tony Blair three months ago, had allowed his Labour Party to fan speculation in recent weeks that he would hold an early election.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation was launched in October 2006 to promote good governance in Africa with the support of world leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Alpha Konaré, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. On October 22 2007, the foundation will announce the winner of the world’s biggest prize, the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, to be awarded to a former African executive head of state.
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/ 28 September 2007
Meet Max, the Stud Butler. He’s an oversized, flesh-coloured ventriloquist’s dummy with a bow tie and hard-on — the world’s first hands-free sex toy, available at South Africa’s first sex expo, the Sexpo. However, he won’t fit discreetly into the underwear drawer, and will probably require a cupboard all to himself.
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/ 27 September 2007
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe accused United States President George Bush of ”rank hypocrisy” on Wednesday for lecturing him on human rights, and likened the US Guantánamo Bay prison to a concentration camp. ”His hands drip with innocent blood of many nationalities,” Mugabe said in a typically fiery speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
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/ 24 September 2007
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised a new drive to transform the health service and schools on Monday, but again failed to stamp out speculation he may call an early general election. He was to lay out his plans for "a fairer, stronger Britain" in his first speech as leader to the ruling Labour Party’s annual conference later on Monday.
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/ 24 September 2007
Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on Sunday there was ”no war in the offing” between his country and the United States. He told the CBS programme 60 Minutes: ”It’s wrong to think that Iran and the US are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war?”
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/ 23 September 2007
”Mugabe stands very tall and black,” boasted Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru in Zimbabwe on Saturday. ”Brown stands white and colonial.” It was a reminder of the intensity of the diplomatic row that has erupted over British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s decision to boycott a Europe-Africa summit if Mugabe shows up.
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/ 22 September 2007
The Dutch government rejected mounting calls for a referendum on Europe’s new reform treaty on Friday night, two years after Dutch voters killed off the European constitution in a referendum that stunned the European Union. Despite Friday’s decision in The Hague, the Dutch coalition is split.
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/ 21 September 2007
Gordon Brown or Robert Mugabe? One won’t go to a summit between Europe and Africa in December, but the Portuguese hosts say the potential rewards of closer ties between the two continents outweigh the antagonism between the leaders of Britain and Zimbabwe.