Mugabe ready for talks to end Zimbabwe crisis
July 21, 2008
Zimbabwe’s opposition and the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe will sign a deal on later today laying down a framework for formal talks to end the country’s deep crisis, according to sources from both sides.
An official of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, would sign the deal with Mr Mugabe. Another MDC faction will also sign the document.
"I can confirm that the president (Tsvangirai) is going to sign that agreement in person," the MDC official told Reuters.
A government official said the deal would be signed at an Harare hotel this afternoon. He did not say if Mugabe would sign for the ruling party, ZANU-PF.
South African President Thabo Mbeki, the official regional mediator in Zimbabwe, has arrived in Harare for the signing of the memorandum of understanding.
He was greeted at the airport by Mugabe, and the two leaders left together shortly afterwards without speaking to reporters.
Both Mugabe and Tsvangirai have been under heavy world and African pressure to enter negotiations since Mugabe’s re-election on June 27 in a widely condemned presidential poll boycotted by the opposition.
Analysts said the talks were only a first step in paving the way for formal negotiations that are expected to be extremely tough, with both Mugabe and Tsvangirai demanding to be recognised as Zimbabwe’s rightful president.
Zimbabwe’s economic collapse under Mugabe’s rule has flooded neighbouring countries with millions of refugees and saddled the once prosperous country with inflation of at least 2 million percent as well as crippling food and fuel shortages.
Mr Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition faction, has previously refused to sign even a framework deal unless government militias stop violence he says has killed 120 of his supporters and Mugabe recognised his victory in the first round of the presidential poll on March 29.
The MDC leader pulled out of the run-off because of the violence.
Mr Mugabe blames the opposition for the bloodshed between the two rounds of the election.
The atmosphere changed late last week when Mr Mbeki agreed to expand the mediation process to include the African Union, the United Nations and other officials from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a "reference group."
Mr Mbeki is expected to liaise with the group although it will not be directly involved in negotiations.
Expansion of the mediation beyond Mr Mbeki has been a key demand of Tsvangirai, who has strongly criticised the South African president, accusing him of favouring Mr Mugabe.
Western powers, who have unsuccessfully tried to push targeted sanctions against Mr Mugabe’s circle and an arms embargo through the United Nations, also called for expanded mediation.
Mr Mbeki, who favours a softly softly approach to Mr Mugabe, has failed to end the crisis as the single mediator since last year and has come under strong criticism both at home and abroad.
"The memorandum represents a positive step forward in the ongoing dialogue among the parties as facilitated by President Mbeki acting on behalf of SADC," the South African government said in a statement.
Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader for 28 years, insists that the opposition accept that he is the duly elected president, despite Mr Tsvangirai’s demand that the first round result should stand.
"Tsvangirai has so far done well to press for and win a role for both the AU and the UN in the mediation process, but he has to remain alert all the way because he is dealing with a foxy man - Mugabe," said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe.
"The actual negotiations are going to be a lot tougher and the MDC’s aim of easing Mugabe out of power or sharing executive power (with ZANU-PF) in a transitional government ahead of another election is going to be more difficult to get," he said.
John Makumbe, a Mugabe critic and veteran political commentator, said while negotiations were important to end the deepening crisis, the MDC was in danger of "legitimising an illegitimate regime."
"Mugabe wants these negotiations to ease pressure on his regime, and they are going to wave these talks to tell the international community to get off their backs," he said.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
Greek police charge Briton with baby murder
July 21, 2008
A 20-year-old British woman has been charged with the murder of her baby in Crete, the Foreign Office said today.
A spokesman said: "We can confirm a British national was charged with the murder of her baby in Malia, Crete, today. We are providing consular assistance."
He said he could not comment further due to the ongoing police investigation.
The woman was believed to have been arrested earlier on suspicion of strangling her newborn baby after giving birth in a hotel room.
It is understood officers were called after locals rushed the woman, who was bleeding heavily, to hospital.
Police reportedly found the dead baby in the hotel room with sheets around its neck and covering its face.
The woman is believed to have been in Crete on holiday with her sister and a female friend.
Malia, on Crete’s north coast, is a popular spot for British tourists.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
Brown to target Iran in historic first speech from Knesset floor
July 21, 2008
Gordon Brown will today use the first ever speech by a British prime minister to the Israeli parliament to issue a clear threat of tougher international action if Iran fails to halt steps towards becoming a nuclear military power.
“Iran now has a clear choice to make: suspend its nuclear programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response not of one nation, but of many nations,” Mr Brown will say from the Knesset floor.
The threat will be coupled with a strongly personal restatement of his affection for Israel, inherited from his father, a Church of Scotland minister who had learnt Hebrew.
Mr Brown yesterday visited the Yad Vashem memorial museum commemorating the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, and today will stress his lifelong affinity with Israel and declare that it is “totally abhorrent for the President of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world.” Mr Brown’s father John, chairman of the Church of Scotland’s Israel Committee, would show his family films on an old projector after his at least twice-yearly trips to the Holy Land. “I will never forget those early images of your home in my home and the stories my father would tell. I followed the fortunes of an age old people in their new country.”
Saying there was “never a time as I was growing up when … I was not surrounded by stories of the struggles, tribulation and triumphs as the Israeli people built their new state,” he will add: “To those who question Israel’s very right to exist we say: the people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security.”
At the same time Mr Brown may also use his Knesset speech – as the French President Nicolas Sarkozy did last month – to couple warm praise for the 60-year-old Israeli state with an exhortation to it to make the concessions needed to end the Middle East conflict, including making East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state.
After meeting the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, the Prime Minister called for an end to the settlement expansion which the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank says is hampering efforts to agree the outlines of a two state solution. Mr Brown had earlier passed the through the main checkpoint into the West Bank city where he saw the nine-metre high concrete wall – part of the Israeli military’s 450-mile separation barrier – dividing the city from Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory south of Jerusalem.
While stressing Israel’s right to live in security, he declared: “As a child, I learnt about Bethlehem from the Bible as a symbol of peace and a symbol of hope. But today, the wall here is graphic evidence of the urgent need for justice for the Palestinian people and an end to the occupation and the need for a viable Palestinian state.”
Mr Brown, who was accompanied by a delegation of senior British businessman, as he promoted investment in the Palestinian economy, yesterday announced a further £60m of UK government money for the Palestinian Authority on top of the £500m he has already pledged over three years.
Avner Shalev, the director of Yad Vashem, said that Mr Brown had been “very moved” by his visit to Yad Vashem, where at the end of his tour he wore a kippa as he rekindled the eternal flame in the Hall of Remembrance. At the Janos Korczak memorial to the 1.5 million children who died in the Holocaust, he wrote in the visitors’ book: “Nothing prepares one for the story that is told here – of the atrocities that should never have happened and the truth that everyone who loves humanity should know.”
Interesting? Click here to explore further
Asian (con)Fusion: Yes, I took a hand-out
July 21, 2008
The rumours doing the rounds in Delhi about the bribes apparently being offered to Indian MPs ahead of tomorrow’s confidence vote on the government are remarkable.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
TV fine for ‘wardrobe malfunction’ overturned
July 21, 2008
A federal appeals court today threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show that ended with Janet Jackson’s breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction."
The three-judge panel of the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission "acted arbitrarily and capriciously" in issuing the fine for the fleeting image of nudity.
The 90 million people watching the Super Bowl, many of them children, heard Justin Timberlake sing, "Gonna have you naked by the end of this song," as he reached for Jackson’s bustier.
The court found that the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so "pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience."
"Like any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second-guessing," the court said. "But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of and a reasoned explanation for its policy departure."
The 3rd Circuit judges — Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica, Judge Marjorie O. Rendell and Judge Julio M. Fuentes — also ruled that the FCC deviated from its long-held approach of applying identical standards to words and images when reviewing complaints of indecency.
"The Commission’s determination that CBS’ broadcast of a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast was actionably indecent evidenced the agency’s departure from its prior policy," the court found.
A CBS spokeswoman said the company was working on a statement Monday morning. Messages left for an FCC spokesman were not immediately returned.
The FCC argued that Jackson’s nudity, albeit fleeting, was graphic and explicit and CBS should have been forewarned.
Jackson has said the decision to add a costume reveal — exposing her right breast, which had only a silver sunburst "shield" covering her nipple — came after the final rehearsal.
At the time, broadcasters did not employ a video delay for live events, a policy remedied within a week of the game.
In challenging the fine, CBS said that "fleeting, isolated or unintended" images should not automatically be considered indecent.
But the FCC argued that Jackson and Timberlake were employees of CBS and that the network should have to pay for their "willful" actions, given its lack of oversight.
In June 2007, a federal appeals court in New York invalidated the government’s policy on fleeting profanities uttered over the airwaves. The case involved remarks made by Cher and Nicole Richie on awards shows carried on Fox stations.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
Brown warns Iran over nuclear threat
July 21, 2008
Gordon Brown threatened Iran with tougher sanctions today as he became the first British prime minister to address the Israeli parliament.
At the conclusion of his first trip to Jerusalem as Premier, Mr Brown vowed that Britain would stand by Israel’s side as it faced threats to its existence.
Condemning as "abhorrent" Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to be wiped from the map, he said he would not stand by as Tehran sought to acquire nuclear weapons.
The Prime Minister also urged Israel to seize the opportunity of lasting peace with the Palestinians.
He was heckled at one point as he raised again the need for Israelis to withdraw from settlements on Palestinian land - an issue over which he clashed with his opposite number, Ehud Olmert, yesterday.
Mr Brown, who was greeted at the Knesset with a red carpet and guard of honour, pleased his audience of MPs and visitors with a Hebrew phrase soon into his speech, "Shalom aleichem", meaning peace be unto you.
He went on to describe his long-standing admiration for Israel, stemming from his churchman father’s fascination with, and frequent visits, to the country.
He said his premiership would ensure that Britain remained Israel’s "true friend".
"A friend in difficult times as well as in good times, a friend who will stand beside you whenever your peace, your stability and your existence are under threat, a friend who shares an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice.
"And to those who mistakenly and outrageously call for the end of Israel, let the message be: Britain will always stand firmly by Israel’s side."
He said anti-Semitism and persecution was to be condemned in "all its forms", adding: "To those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears we say, in one voice, that it is totally abhorrent for the president of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world.
"And I promise that just as we have led the work on three mandatory sanctions resolutions of the UN, the UK will continue to lead - with the US and our EU partners - in our determination to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons programme.
"The EU has gone beyond each of these resolutions. Last month we took action against an Iranian bank involved in proliferation.
"We stand ready to lead in taking firmer sanctions and ask the whole international community to join us.
"Iran has a choice to make: suspend its nuclear programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response not of one nation but of many nations."
Turning to the Middle East peace process, Mr Brown insisted that a lasting settlement was within reach.
But he risked angering some Israelis by reprising his controversial comments of yesterday when he warned that the continued expansion of settlements into Palestinian areas was undermining the negotiations.
Israeli PM Mr Olmert pointedly acknowledged Mr Brown’s criticism following talks last night, but gave no indication that policy would change.
At least one onlooker called out during today’s speech as Mr Brown revisited the issue. It was not immediately clear whether the heckler was an MP or a visitor.
Mr Brown said Israel must "seize the opportunity" opened by the celebrated Annapolis peace conference in the US last year.
And he went on: "Because I believe this historic, hard-won and lasting peace is within your reach, I urge you to take it by the hand.
"And to deliver this peace, it is vital also that both sides now create the conditions for a final agreement - the Palestinians acting with persistence and perseverance against the terrorists who attack your country, Israel freezing, and withdrawing from, settlements.
"Like many of your friends, I urge you to make these decisions."
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: "While the Prime Minister is absolutely right to condemn President Ahmadinejad’s vile threats to Israel, he must come clean about his position on military action against Iran.
"He must make it clear that Britain will not give its approval to a unilateral strike by Israel. This would have devastating consequences for the region, and for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Last time the US and UK gave a nod and a wink to Israel over its attack on Lebanon, it went disastrously wrong.
"As Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw said a military strike on Iran would be ‘completely nuts’. Gordon Brown must be equally explicit with both Israel and the British public that he will not back unilateral military action against Iran in any form.
"With the US at long last becoming engaged in a process of active diplomacy, now is not the time to be backing away from a peaceful solution."
Interesting? Click here to explore further
Bin Laden’s driver denies war crime charge
July 21, 2008
The first Guantanamo war crimes trial began today with a not guilty plea from a former driver and alleged bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, entered the plea through his lawyer at the US Navy base in Cuba.
He is the first prisoner to face a US war crimes trial since the Second World War.
Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, called a jury pool of American military officers into the courtroom and began reading them instructions. A minimum of five of the 13 officers must be selected for the trial.
Hamdan, a Yemeni, wore a khaki prison jump-suit to the courtroom. The flowing white robe and headdress he wore at pre-trial hearings was not cleaned in time for his trial, said Charles Swift, one of his civilian lawyers.
The trial is expected to take three to four weeks, with testimony from nearly two dozen Pentagon witnesses.
Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001, with two surface-to-air missiles in the car. But his lawyers say he was merely a low-level driver and mechanic without any role in al Qaida.
Hamdan was taken to Guantanamo in May 2002 and selected as one of the first inmates to face prosecution. His case has created repeated legal obstacles for the Pentagon including a Supreme Court ruling that struck down an earlier version of the tribunal system.
Judge Allred began the proceedings by indicating that he would not allow the government to use some of the evidence interrogators obtained from Hamdan during his detention in Afghanistan.
Defence lawyers have argued those statements were tainted by "coercive" techniques and the fact that interrogators did not advise him of a right against self-incrimination.
The US has so far charged 20 Guantanamo prisoners and military officials say they expect to prosecute about 80 in all.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
World warned over killer flu pandemic
July 21, 2008
The world is failing to guard against the inevitable spread of a devastating flu pandemic which could kill 50 million people and wreak massive disruption around the globe, the Government has warned.
In evidence to a House of Lords committee, ministers said that early warning systems for spotting emerging diseases were “poorly co-ordinated” and lacked “vision” and “clarity”. They said that more needed to be done to improve detection and surveillance for potential pandemics and called for urgent improvement in rapid-response strategies.
The Government’s evidence appeared in a highly critical report from the Lords Intergovernmental Organisations Committee, which attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) as “dysfunctional” and criticised the international response to the threat of an outbreak of disease which could sweep across the globe.
The Government said: “While there has not been a pandemic since 1968, another one is inevitable.” Ministers said it would could kill between two and 50 million people worldwide and that such an outbreak would leave up to 75,000 people dead in Britain and cause “massive” disruption.
Peers joined ministers calling for urgent action to build up early warning systems across the Third World that can identify and neutralise outbreaks of potentially deadly new strains of disease before they are swept across the globe by modern trade and travel. Peers also called for new action to monitor animal diseases, warning of the potentially disastrous effects of conditions such as the H5N1 bird flu virus jumping to humans and demanded that Britain step up funding for the WHO to tackle the threat.
With international tourist journeys now reaching 800 million a year, giving unprecedented potential for epidemics to spread across borders, and many cities rapidly growing in developing countries, which would provide “fertile ground” to spread disease, peers on the committee warned that conditions such as Sars, avian influenza and ebola “have the potential to cause rapid and devastating sickness and death across much of the world if they are not detected and checked in time”.
Their report said: “We have been warned that an influenza pandemic is overdue and that when – rather than if – it comes the effects could be devastating, particularly if the strain of the virus should be of the H5N1 variety that has been seen in south-east Asia in recent years.
“While much progress has been made in the past 10 years in improving global surveillance and response systems, much remains to be done if we are to detect new strains of the virus and counter them before they have had the chance to spread.”
The report called for a fundamental overhaul of the WHO’s regional offices around the world. “Given the threats to global health that we face from newly emerging infectious diseases, a dysfunctional organisational structure within the world’s principal policy-making, standard-setting and surveillance body simply cannot be afforded.”
A government briefing given to the committee warned: “Not all countries have the resources or capacities to put in place a seasonal influenza vaccination policy and, in the event of an influenza pandemic, it is also recognised that current stock will not meet world-wide demand.
“There needs to be an improvement to rapid response strategies in poorer, more vulnerable, countries.”
Ministers warned that there was “no agreed vision or clarity over roles” among the international bodies working in the field.
Lord Soley, the committee’s chairman, welcomed efforts to guard against a flu pandemic but warned: “They are not good enough. We have a pandemic twice every century. If something developed in a country with a developed healthcare system you would stop it and stop it before it went round the world. You cannot have that confidence about the developing world,” it warned.
Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesman, likened the threat from a pandemic to the threat of international terrorism. He said: “Globally there has been massive attention to the threat from terrorism and rightly so. But the potential for loss of life from a pandemic is massive, enormous and yet we stare a disaster in the face and we see a chaotic, uncoordinated and incoherent international response to it.
“Disease can spread like wildfire. We have to dramatically step up the response.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health acknowledged that “more clearly needs to be done improve detection, surveillance and general response capacity building”. She said Britain was working to improve the international response to bird flu and a potential pandemic and was working to improve international co-ordination on the issue.
She added: “We agree that there is considerable scope to improve the effectiveness and coherence of intergovernmental organisations working in this area.”
Interesting? Click here to explore further
Madeleine police investigation shelved
July 21, 2008
The Madeleine McCann investigation has been shelved by the Portuguese authorities today after they found no evidence that the three suspects committed any crimes.
The young girl’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were formally cleared of involvement in their daughter’s disappearance after having their status as "arguidos", or formal suspects, lifted.
The investigation can be re-opened if new evidence comes to light, the office of Portugal’s attorney-general, Fernando Jose Pinto Monteiro, said in a statement.
The third suspect in the case, Algarve property consultant Robert Murat, also had his arguido status lifted.
McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "Kate and Gerry have now been informed of the attorney-general’s statement from Portugal.
"It’s far too early to give their immediate reaction yet, but they are, of course, liaising closely with their lawyers in Portugal and Britain.
"Once they have digested the content of the attorney-general’s statement and any implications, they will give a reaction a little later this evening."
He added, of the removal of their arguido status: "I know they will welcome this news but the whole thing has been a distraction since September.
"The main thing now is to get everything back to finding Madeleine. All of this has damaged their good reputations and they will have to assess where they go from here.
"The only thing they care about is finding Madeleine. We hope that the Portuguese authorities will continue to cooperate with their private investigation."
Detectives handed over their lengthy final report at the start of this month for prosecutors to consider whether to bring charges, request further inquiries or close the case.
Now the case has been shelved, the McCanns want their own private investigators to be given access to the police files so they can continue the search for their daughter.
Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz as her parents dined in a tapas restaurant with friends nearby.
Despite a huge police investigation and massive coverage in the Portuguese and British media, she has not been found.
"They should never have been arguidos. The fact that they have emerged from this without being charged proves that."
Interesting? Click here to explore further
Venice police launch inquiry after schoolgirl falls from hotel
July 21, 2008
Italian police were investigating last night how a 16-year-old British schoolgirl came to fall nearly 30ft on to a pavement and suffered multiple injuries after the window ledge where she was sitting after a late-night party collapsed without warning.
Doctors treating Su Cangatin-Ripley said she had avoided death because her fall, at around 1am on Saturday from the second floor of the Hotel Cristallo on the Venice Lido, was broken by the canvas awning of a bar directly beneath her window, causing her to bounce on to a footpath.
The teenager, a member of a party of 42 students and teachers from a private school in Battersea, south London, taking part in a choir tour, was in hospital last night with head, chest and renal injuries. Staff at the Dell’Angelo Hospital in Mestre, where she is being treated, said she had made good progress after initially being put on a ventilator, adding she was "very lucky to be alive".
As her parents maintained a vigil at her bedside, managers at the hotel said they had warned the pupils and their supervisors about the risks of sitting on the ledges the day before the accident.
Photographs showed the thick concrete sill, where witnesses said Ms Cangatin-Ripley had been smoking a cigarette while sitting with her legs dangling from the window, had sheared from its stone frame along almost its entire length. The Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that the teenager, a keen athlete and euphonium player, had been talking with fellow pupils sitting in similar positions on the first and second floors of the hotel. Nicola Fullin, the manager of the Hotel Cristallo, a popular three-star hotel on the Lido beach resort, claimed that boys and girls from the £3,400-a-term Emanuel School had been misbehaving.
Mr Fullin said: "The last few nights the students were spotted sitting on the window ledge and some were smoking. We spoke to the teachers about it and warned them it was dangerous – we also heard that the students were climbing into other rooms via the windows."
The group of 37 students and five teachers were in Venice to perform five church concerts and had sung in the famous Chiesa di San Pietro di Castello prior to the fall.
Mr Fullin added: "I know there had been a party on a nearby beach earlier but I’m not sure if the girl had been drinking. She has been very lucky, she is alive thanks to the fact she hit the canopy first. It’s a miracle that was even there – the bar owners usually close it at night."
The room in which Ms Cangatin-Ripley had been staying remained sealed yesterday as police continued their investigation. Mr Fullin insisted the damage to the ledge had been caused by firefighters called to the scene although police confirmed it had at least partly collapsed when the teenager fell.
A Venice police spokesman said: "We are just focusing on the fact that she has been seriously injured after the ledge gave way and have sealed off the room."
Onofrio La Manna, the director of the Dell’Angelo Hospital, said scans showed the teenager had bruising to her liver, lung and kidneys but her head and chest injuries appeared superficial. He said: "Doctors are very pleased with her progress. She can think herself very lucky to be alive."
No one from Emanuel College was available to comment.
Interesting? Click here to explore further