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I wonder if he'll live that long? Anyway, he deserves longer because now they have to suffer because of him...
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ReutersQuote:
Zimbabwe's main opposition party is going to court to force the release of results from the presidential poll one week ago and President Robert Mugabe signalled he planned to fight to extend his 28-year rule.
Lawyers representing Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change will ask a high court in Harare for an order compelling election officials to issue the results immediately, ending a delay that has raised suspicions of a tainted vote.
The MDC claims Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe and should be declared president of the economically devastated African nation, but independent observers say the MDC leader did not win an outright majority and faces a run-off against Mugabe.
The court case will begin overnight according to MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
"We want an urgent release of the results, within four hours of the court order," he said. "We're fighting the anxiety, disappointment, speculation and rumours as a result of this delay."
Senior officials of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party said on Friday that they would back the 84-year-old veteran in the second round of voting, ending speculation earlier in the week that they might ask him to
step down.
ZANU-PF said it would challenge some of the results of the parliamentary election, which showed it lost control of the lower house. Preliminary results from the upper chamber show Mugabe's party ahead by three seats.
The government-run Herald newspaper reported on Saturday that a provincial elections officer had been arrested in Zimbabwe's Midlands over charges that some polling stations under him had inflated vote tallies for the MDC and recorded lower votes for Mugabe and parliamentary ZANU-PF candidates.
"ZANU-PF in the province say they are checking every ward as they suspect a wider conspiracy," it said.
Mugabe's officials said on Friday his party would go to court over what it alleged was bribery of electoral officials in some places, but was already preparing for a run-off.
It is not clear when the run-off would occur. Zimbabwean law requires that it be held within three weeks, but the ruling party hinted on Friday that the timing might be changed.
The hardening of the ruling party's position has punctured the guarded optimism that had emerged among the opposition and Mugabe's critics in the West, who hoped the ex-liberation war fighter would concede defeat.
The MDC said in advertisements placed in South African newspapers on Saturday that it wanted peace.
"At this stage we offer the hand of peace to the current regime, and will recognise and respect their rights if the transition is expedited without further ado, but this offer will not remain open indefinitely," the MDC said.
Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States, both of whom have applied sanctions on Mugabe and his top officials, have criticised the election delay and suggested it could be the precursor to a rigged result.
Mugabe's government is widely accused in the West of stealing previous presidential and parliamentary elections, and his removal is seen by Washington and London as necessary to rebuilding Zimbabwe's shattered economy.
Zimbabweans are struggling with the world's highest inflation of more than 100,000 percent, mass unemployment and chronic shortages of meat, bread, fuel and other basic goods.
Worries that tensions could explode rose on Friday when liberation war veterans, a pro-Mugabe group that has in the past intimidated government opponents and violently occupied white-owned farms, attacked the MDC for claiming victory.
"These are all provocations against us freedom fighters," veterans' leader Jabulani Sibanda told a news conference.
He said the veterans would repel any attempt by white farmers to reclaim properties seized by Mugabe. "It now looks like these elections were a way to open for the re-invasion of this country (by the British)," he said.
The farm seizures, part of a government policy of redistributing land to poor blacks, are often blamed for the devastation of Zimbabwe's
farm sector.
Food output has fallen sharply since the seizures began in 2000 and Zimbabwe, once an exporter, now relies on food imports and handouts to feed its people.
ReutersQuote:
Protesters angry over rising living costs have rioted in the southwestern Haitian town of Les Cayes, burning shops, shooting at peacekeepers and looting containers in a UN compound, the United Nations said.
Les Cayes was still tense after the riots on Thursday, and the UN force trying to maintain the peace in the volatile Caribbean country sent 100 peacekeepers as reinforcements, the statement said.
Food prices in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, have soared in recent months, stoking anger against the government of President Rene Preval.
Preval's election in 2006 raised expectations that the country would finally start on the path to stability after decades of turbulence, culminating in the February 2004 ouster of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
A small group of protesters broke into the UN compound in Les Cayes during Thursday's protest, damaging the main gate and ignoring warning shots from peacekeepers, the statement said.
"The protesters also burned shops in Les Cayes and threw rocks and fired weapons at some of the blue helmets during the night."
Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the more prosperous Dominican Republic, has been relatively tranquil recently, although a resurgence in kidnappings and crime has alarmed the United Nations.
Just under 9,000 Brazilian-led UN peacekeepers and civilian police are stationed in Haiti.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week called on the international community and Haiti's leaders to keep up their efforts to bring stability to the country. "The potential for regression remains," he said in a report.
ReutersQuote:
Pirates have stormed a French luxury yacht off the coast of Somalia and taken its 30 crew hostage, prompting Paris to send troops to the area to secure the prisoners' release.
Luxury sailboat the Ponant was heading from the Seychelles to the Mediterranean Sea when pirates stormed it in the Gulf of Aden, which lies between Somalia and Yemen, said a spokesman for the boat's owner, the Compagnie des Iles du Ponant.
There were no holidaymakers on board, a spokesman for the tour company said, adding that most of the crew are French.
"It is a blatant act of piracy. We have relatively large military means in this area. We are mobilised to obtain the release of the hostages as quickly as possible," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told reporters in Brussels.
France has 2,900 troops stationed in Djibouti, which borders Somalia and also lies on the Gulf of Aden.
Fillon said he hoped the hostages would be freed "in the coming hours and minutes", adding that he had activated an emergency plan to send French troops to the area and ask France's allies in the region to do the same.
Pirate attacks regularly disrupt shipping off the Somali coast, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which reported some 31 cases of piracy in the area in 2007.
The yacht, shown on the tour company's Web site, is an 88-metre (289 ft), three-mast ship capable of housing 64 passengers in its 32 cabins, all of which are equipped with a flat-screen television and a minibar.
The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement an "interministerial crisis cell" had been set up and it was in close contact with the yacht's owners.
France Info radio said surveillance aircraft had been diverted to the area and a ship from the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom was heading towards the site of the attack.
French Defence Ministry spokesman Christophe Prazuck declined to say whether French Navy ships would head to the site, but added that ships in anti-terrorist unit Task Force 150, part of Operation Enduring Freedom, were in the area.
ReutersQuote:
Fresh rioting has broken out in a Tibetan area of southwest China, defying a huge security crackdown there, even as officials in Tibet vowed swift, harsh punishment for those who sparked the initial anti-Chinese unrest.
The latest riot to shake Tibetan areas of China occurred on Thursday night in Donggu Township, Ganzi (Garze) Prefecture, a largely ethnic Tibetan area in Sichuan province's mountainous west, Xinhua news agency reported late on Friday.
"Police were forced to fire warning shots and put down the violence," an official with the prefectural government said.
"An official was attacked and seriously wounded in a riot," the brief report said, adding that he was "seriously wounded".
The report did not explain the cause of the unrest or whether it involved ethnic Tibetans, who have been protesting against China's rule and calling for the return of the exhiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama.
Ganzi and neighbouring Aba in Sichuan province have seen torrid confrontation between Tibetan protesters and police in past weeks. Anti-riot troops have poured into the area.
A mob armed with stones and knives killed an armed Chinese policeman in Ganzi late last month. On March 16, Buddhist monks and residents in Aba protested, demanding Tibetan independence from China. More than 200 police and officials there were hurt when violence broke out, a local official said this week.
The widespread unrest began in Lhasa, the capital of neighbouring Tibet province, and there officials on Friday vowed quick trials for those behind the unrest.
Lhasa was last month hit by Buddhist monks' protests against Chinese rule that gave way to deadly rioting on March 14, and since then security forces have poured in to reimpose control there and in other restive Tibetan areas.
China says 19 people died in the Lhasa violence but representatives of the Dalai Lama say some 140 people died in the unrest across Tibet and nearby areas.
Chinese officials have accused the Dalai Lama of organising the unrest to press for Tibetan independence ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games in August, and vowed to come down hard on rioters and on protesters supporting him.
The Dalai Lama has repeatedly denied the accusations and said he wants true autonomy, but not outright independence, for Tibet.
The region's courts have made clear that they will back the crackdown, hand out tough verdicts and reinforce the government's campaign against the Dalai Lama.
Tibet's top law-and-order official Baima Chilin told judges to "use the weapon of the law to attack enemies, punish crime, protect the people and maintain stability," the Tibet Daily reported.
"Use trial according to the law of all the criminals to shock criminality and root out the base of the separatists. Use ample evidence to expose to the world the Dalai clique's lies of peace and non-violence."
Baima Chilin ordered swift trials and said the judges "have the confidence of the Party."
On Thursday, an official Tibet news website said police had caught over 800 people involved in the Lhasa violence and 280 people had turned themselves in. Monks involved in the earlier protests have also been charged.
The United States and many European countries have expressed worry about the tensions, calling on Beijing to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and allow foreign reporters and observers to freely visit Tibet.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, held "private discussions" with Chinese officials on Tibet and raised access to the region, her spokesman said on Friday.
"The issue of accessibility is obviously paramount because without that it's very hard to come to any conclusions about what has happened or what should happen next," Arbour's spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing in Geneva.
But Chinese officials and state media have criticised Western news reports of the Tibetan unrest, claiming they have misrepresented violence as peaceful protest, vilified efforts to develop Tibet, and echoed false claims of independence advocates.
A major Chinese internet site has now launched an online petition drive aimed at condemning Western media reports on the unrest.
By Friday evening, Sina.com's online petition condemning Western press reports claimed close to one million signatures, with many signers voicing nationalist outrage.
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