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HARARE, ZIMBABWE - The protest was scheduled for 10 a.m., but at the appointed hour not a single demonstrator was in sight. It was like any other weekday morning on a busy Harare street, bustling with hawkers and beggars, shoppers and businessmen. Suddenly, 15 men materialized from the crowd, pulling creased signs from beneath their shirts. For a minute or so, they silently held their antigovernment placards aloft. Then as quickly as they appeared, they melted back into street, the yellow cardboard littering the ground the only evidence that any protest had occurred. Almost a year after Zimbabwe's disputed presidential...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Zimbabwe's main opposition leader was involved in a plot to assassinate or overthrow Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, a consulting firm with ties to Mugabe's government claimed Wednesday. An official at Dicksen & Madson said he secretly taped a meeting with Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, where they discussed removing Mugabe from power. Tsvangirai was apparently unaware of the firm's connection to the government. The grainy footage was broadcast on Australian television Wednesday night. Tsvangirai told The Associated Press the tape was "contrived." He refused to comment further, but opposition spokesman ...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Government claims that the opposition leader plotted to assassinate President Robert Mugabe have left many Zimbabweans puzzled about how they should vote in next month's hard-fought presidential elections. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has vehemently denied claims his party, the Movement for Democratic Change approached a Canadian political consultancy to arrange a hit. Voters like Caleb Dambiti said the nonstop coverage of the alleged assassination plan in the state-run media has perplexed him. "I don't know what to believe any more. If he did it, why isn't he in jail?" Dambiti said. Mugabe himself, campaigning for the ...

SENIOR Zanu PF politicians and members of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces have with the help of Canadian lobbyists Dickens & Madson turned Zimbabwe into a hub for trade in "blood" diamonds illegally brought into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it emerged this week. The Zimbabwe Independent has been told how gemstones from the DRC have been laundered to line the pockets of Zanu PF big-wigs. American international diamond buyer, John Marsischky, managing director of gemstones company Flashes of Color, revealed in an interview this week that Dickens & Madson, the company which last week claimed it ...

Tsvangirai says he is being framed Lawyers defending Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on treason charges have accused the key prosecution witness of being a serial fraudster. They say that Canada-based political consultant Ari Ben-Menashe video-taped a meeting with Mr Tsvangirai as part of a government plot to stifle the opposition. Mr Tsvangirai and two colleagues from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) pleaded not guilty to treason charges when the trial began on Monday. Mr Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence officer, says the three contracted him to assassinate President Robert Mugabe before last year's elections. Mr Mugabe won but...

<p>JOHANNESBURG - In 1963, lawyer George Bizos saved anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela from the gallows, and Mr. Mandela went on to become president of South Africa. Forty years later, he is defending Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on a capital charge of plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe.</p>

<p>Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad asset who was used by Israeli intelligence to blackmail politicians, according to a former Israeli spy.</p> <p>Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli spy and alleged “handler” of Robert Maxwell, told the authors of a new book, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, that Epstein ran a “complex intelligence operation” at the behest of Mossad.</p>

The Israeli government is expected to approve the long awaited 'aliyah' (immigration) of more than 7,200 Indian Jews from the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram in the coming weeks, a media report said. The decision to allow the last members of the "lost" Bnei Menashe tribe to immigrate to Israel is being greeted with excitement by local Evangelical Christian groups, who view it as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and who have pledged financial support for the move, 'The Jerusalem Post' daily reported. The ministerial committee on immigration and absorption, headed by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, decided, about three months...

A team of senior Israeli rabbis is due to rule soon on whether thousands of Indians who say they are members of one of the lost tribes of Israel can settle there. Only 5,000 of the Benei Menashes have converted to Judaism Shlomo Amar recently led a delegation of rabbis to the north-eastern Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram where members of the Benei Menashe tribe live and practise Judaism. At the Beith-el Synagogue in the Manipur capital, Imphal, nine men wearing knitted skull caps read silently from the Old Testament. Four others stand on a wooden platform in the...

All three were born in China, in the ancient Jewish community in Kaifeng. They immigrated to Israel some five years ago and recently completed their conversion and naturalization processes. In two weeks, they'll report to the Israel Defense Forces' Induction Center in Tel Hashomer and join the army. Despite their relatively advanced age (all three are 25 years old), they are dreaming of enlisting in the Golani Brigade.

Rabbinate Recognizes Bnei Menashe as “Descendants of Israel" 16:47 Mar 31, '05 / 20 Adar 5765 In a historic decision, Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has decided to formally recognize the Bnei Menashe community of northeastern India as “descendants of Israel.” The Chief Rabbinate has also agreed to send a beit din (rabbinical court) on its behalf to the region to formally convert them to Judaism. The Bnei Menashe claim descent from the tribe of Menashe, one of the ten tribes exiled from the Land of Israel by the Assyrian empire over 2,700 years ago. They reside primarily in...

LONDON: More than 2,000 years after they first claimed to have set foot in India, the mystery of the world's most obscure Jewish community - the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel - may finally have been solved with genetic carbon-dating revealing they carry the unusual Moses gene that would make them, literally, the original children of Israel. Four years of DNA tests on the 4,000-strong Bene Israel, now mainly based in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Ahmedabad, indicates they are probable descendants of a small group of hereditary Israelite priests or Cohanim, according to new results exclusively made available to the Sunday Times...

India's lost tribe recognised as Jews after 2,700 years By Peter Foster in Aizawl (Filed: 17/09/2005) With a cry of "Mazeltov" and a Rabbi's congratulatory handshake, hundreds of tribal people from India's north-east were formally converted to Judaism this week after being recognised as descendants of the 10 Lost Tribes exiled from Israel 2,700 years ago. A rabbinical court, dispatched with the blessing of Israel's Chief Rabbi, travelled 3,500 miles to Mizoram on India's border with Burma to perform the conversions using a Mikvah - ritual bath - built specially for the purpose. There were emotional scenes as the Oriental-looking...

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU 'Lost tribe' of Israel faces summer evac Group believing it descended from Joseph among those targeted for ouster in August Posted: July 5, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza -- They claim to have been forcibly exiled from Israel 2,700 years ago. Following intense lobbying, hundreds recently arrived in the Jewish state from India to settle in what they believe to be their homeland. Now residing in the Jewish communities of Gaza, the group is once again facing exile, this time at the hands of the Israeli government. Meet...

More than 7,000 members of the Bnei Menashe will soon arrive in Israel, CBN reported on Thursday. The Bnei Menashe claim descent from one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, which were exiled by the Assyrian Empire more than 27 centuries ago. They reside primarily in the two Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, along the border with Burma and Bangladesh. Throughout their exile, and even after their one copy of the written Torah was lost, the Bnei Menashe have continued to observe Jewish traditions, including the Sabbath, keeping kosher, celebrating the festivals, following family purity laws, and remembering...