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Two Israelis have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling rough diamonds from Zimbabwe into Israel, news outlets report. Last week, customs officials at Ben-Gurion International Airport reportedly stopped one man for a random check as he was leaving the airport through the "nothing to declare" lane and found a number of rough diamonds in his clothing pockets. When questioned, the man reportedly told authorities that he was employed in Zimbabwe as a water consultant and had been instructed to bring the diamonds – which do not carry Kimberley Process certification – to Israel by a diamond trader. When the diamond...

A BIZARRE accident involving warthogs delayed the arrival of US Ambassador to Harare according to a WikiLeaks cable. Ambassador Charles Ray failed to arrive in Zimbabwe on November 3 2009 after the wild animals strayed onto the runway where they were struck by an Air Zimbabwe plane. Security officials forced passengers to surrender any photographic evidence of the crash before they were allowed to leave. All night flights on that day, including Ray’s South African Airways flight were cancelled. However, the warthogs saved the day for Getrude Hambira, the Secretary General of the General Agriculture Plantation Workers Union. The unionist...

Harare - Zimbabwe's autocratic president, Robert Mugabe, is determined to hold elections by June. With his Zanu (PF) party in shambles, and opinion polls suggesting a drubbing, one might be forgiven for thinking the elder statesman was beginning to lose it. The country has been ruled for the past 19 months by a coalition government involving the 86-year-old president and pro-democracy leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The atmosphere between the two is so brittle they have not spoken to each other in months. 'We don't look each other in the eye,' Tsvangirai said recently. Mugabe has said he has no more use...

Zimbabwe is slowly but surely sliding back into political repression and into a climate of fear as politicians escalate reckless electioneering and belligerent propaganda. journalists are once more being targeted by President Robert Mugabe's agents of repression and thought police. The journalists' offence used to justify their arrests is thought-crime (in this case thinking and writing politically incorrect news). ... Zimbabwean journalists now fear the return of media tyranny. After all, this is a country in which journalists have not only been arrested and beaten up, but also tortured, leading to their deaths, and some, like Edward Chikomba, even killed.

QE2 Will Not Usher In The Apocalypse by: David Beckworth November 11, 2010 Though some folks would have you believe so. It is far from perfect--it needs an explicit nominal target to make it truly effective--but it is a step in the right direction. Martin Wolf agrees: The sky is falling, scream the hysterics: the Federal Reserve is pouring forth dollars in such quantities that they will soon be worthless. Nothing could be further from the truth. As in Japan, the policy known as “quantitative easing” is far more likely to prove ineffective than lethal. It is a leaky hose,...

THE grieving wife of a man attacked and killed by five lions at a game reserve has asked rangers to spare the lives of the animals. Pete Evershed, 59, a Zimbabwean, was taking a shower when a pride of five lions attacked him on Saturday evening while he was on a camping holiday in Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools National Park. He was staying at the Chitake Springs camp with his wife, brother-in-law and a friend when he was killed. Caroline Washaya-Moyo, the park’s spokesperson, said the “open” shower was 38 metres from where the group had set up their tents. His...

Warning over capital influx as US starts 'unbridled money printing' China should "set up a firewall" as uncontrolled dollar printing in the United States will drive more liquidity into emerging markets, a central bank adviser said on Thursday. "The most urgent need for the emerging market economies is to curb capital inflows," Xia Bin, an academic member of the central bank's monetary policy committee, told a financial forum in Beijing. Xia's comments came as the US Federal Reserve announced a new round of quantitative easing - pledging to buy $600 billion of government bonds - to prop up the ailing...

A Zimbabwean has been killed by a pride of lions while he was showering in a camp in the country's north.The man was attacked while using an outside shower at a fishing camp near Mana Pools National Park, Johnny Rodrigues, chairman of the Zimbabwean Conservation Task Force told German news agency DPA. The area, located on the Zambesi River, is popular with hunters, most of whom stay in basic camps that offer little protection against attack by wild animals. The attack is the latest in a string of lion attacks in the area, Mr Rodrigues said. Eight villagers were killed...

THE roaring chainsaw sends fingernail-like shards flying into the baking Zimbabwean bush as it slices through the slumped black rhino's foot-long horn. The critically endangered female loses her spikes in just seconds, after being darted from a helicopter. A few minutes later, she leaps up and escapes -- disfigured but alive -- in a dramatic attempt to deter the poachers who have unleashed a bloodbath on southern Africa's rhinos. "De-horning reduces the reward for the poacher," said Raoul du Toit of the Lowveld Rhino Trust which operates in Zimbabwe's arid southeast. "Poaching is a balance between reward and risk. It...

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace has been having a secret affair with central bank chief, Gideon Gono, a British newspaper, The Sunday Times has claimed. Grace - who is 41 years younger than 86-year-old Mugabe - has allegedly spent the last five years cuckolding the veteran president with Gono, her husband's financial adviser and a key political ally. The couple would meet as often as three times a month either at Grace’s dairy farm or in expensive hotels in neighbouring South Africa as well as on foreign trips to Asia. Mugabe’s late sister, Sabina, is said to have revealed the...

A HURUNGWE man, who has been in the business of manufacturing replicas of goblins for sale to a witch-hunter, commonly known as Tsikamutanda, to extort villagers’ livestock and money has been arrested. Nicholas Machowani (26) of Mabhoyi Village was jailed for an effective nine months by Karoi magistrate Mr Obedience Matare. Machowani was last Friday slapped with a 12-month jail term after he pleaded guilty to possessing three “goblins” that he intended to sell to Tsikamutanda, Brian Nicks-Chikepe of Makande. Mr Matare suspended three months of the sentence on condition of good behaviour. On September 28 this year at Makande...

A WOMAN suffered burns after a self-styled prophet forced her to clench BURNING CHARCOAL as part of a bizarre healing ritual, a court heard. Phathisani Khoza, 23, admitted a charge of assault before a magistrate in the Midlands town of Gweru this week. He was remanded on US$20 bail awaiting sentence. Magistrate Meo Rubwe heard that on August 16 this year, the victim, Yvonne Dongo, attended a church service conducted by Khoza at a house in Mtapa Section 4 suburb. Prosecutor Michael Mhene said during the service, Khoza started praying for Dongo. In the middle of the prayer, the court...

<p>Women in Zimbabwe are said to be abducting and raping men for ritual purposes.</p> <p>In the past 11 months six men have been gang-raped by women, and as per the police the figure could be much higher, as victims are often too embarrassed to report the crime.</p>

Dictator: Robert Mugabe's regime claimed the diamond mines as their own, using brutal methods to make sure no-one tried to take the stones Across a remote tract of southern Africa, naturally ­fortified by mountains and patrolled by hundreds of ­soldiers with dogs trained to tear intruders apart, teams of mining experts are hard at work.Yet they are not speakers of Shona, the native language of this land on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. No, thousands of miles from home, under a broiling African sun, these slim, pale-skinned figures are members of the Chinese military.Working alongside henchmen from one...

Government and international organizations are lying effectively lying to us, there is no question about it. The present value of the difference between spending and revenues from the CBO is $200 trillion."

HARARE -Racism against white people in Zimbabwe has reached shocking levels particularly in the capital Harare, The Zim Diaspora can reveal. According to reports reaching London, droves of white people were chased away from participating in the constitutional outreach programme in Harare at the weekend, in which violence and confusion marred the process. In Mount Pleasant, white families were subjected to a torrent of abuse by suspected Zanu PF supporters who later drove them away shouting racial slurs. "If this process is to genuinely gather the views of people, then what has happened here is a farce. This is not...

Harare(ZimEye)-The Zimbabwe Republic Police on Saturday failed to take the six arrested American doctors to court citing in-completion of investigations. Police on Thursday arrested six American HIV/AIDS doctors for allegedly operating an unlicensed clinic in Belvedere, Harare, and dispensing medicines without a pharmacist’s supervision and were expected to appear in court on Saturday. Jonathan Samukange of Venturas and Samukange Legal practitioners representing the arrested doctors told journalists Saturday evening that he spent the whole day waiting for the police to complete their papers that they were supposed to file to the courts. “Superintendent Njodzi who is the chief investigating officer...

JOHANNESBURG — Five Americans — two doctors, two nurses and an organizer — who carried donated AIDS drugs to Zimbabwe for distribution to the poor were arrested Thursday and remained jailed in Harare on Saturday on a charge of dispensing the medicine without the supervision of a pharmacist or proper licenses, their lawyer said. The Americans, who are being held in smelly, poorly ventilated cells at Harare Central police station, were to have appeared in court on Saturday for a bail hearing, but the police said they had not finished the paperwork, said the lawyer, Jonathan Samukange. The Americans are...

MUZA Fredrick's desperate situation hardly makes him recognizable as one of the vanguards of President Robert Mugabe's often violent land reform that has seen politically linked chefs enjoying rich pickings. Now in his early 30s, Fredrick says he was part of youth corps who were at the forefront of evictions that began in 2000, rampaging from farm to farm to displace white commercial farmers who were forced to make way for beneficiaries of the land reform programme. Today, living on handouts, Frederick's life has become a daily struggle for survival at Insingisi Farm near Bindura, about 80km north-east of Harare....

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe spent the weekend shopping for high-end suits and shoes in Hong Kong, where he owns a house and his daughter attends university, local media reported Sunday. China is not a party to international sanctions on Mugabe, who is the subject of a Western travel ban and asset freeze. A team of officers from the Hong Kong police VIP protection unit flanked the octogenarian president on Saturday as he visited high-end shops in the city's Kowloon district, local media said. A government spokesman was quoted as saying Mugabe was not on an official visit. Mugabe's daughter Bona...