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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Zimbabwe's president says gay rights will not be protected in a constitution being drawn up under a power-sharing deal. State radio on Friday quoted President Robert Mugabe saying that Western rights groups have called for constitutional reforms to include gay rights. He calls that "insanity." Same-sex acts are illegal in Zimbabwe. Mugabe once described homosexuals as "lower than pigs and dogs."

Last Saturday, we did something that was only a small step up from mindless, unskilled labor. I’m glad we did it. We recommend it to everyone else. An enthusiastic lady came to our Rotary meeting a week before. She was a teacher, acting as a volunteer for her church. She asked us to join with people from another half dozen other Rotary Clubs to pack 100,000 meals for starving people in Haiti. We decided it was a good cause, and we went. There were two shifts requested at the National Guard Armory in the County Seat of Franklin, North Carolina....

Holding handsSaturday 20th March 2010 Dear Family and Friends,South African President Jacob Zuma inspected a guard of honour at Harare airport at the end of his brief visit to Zimbabwe. The South African President's departure was shown on ZBC television and was one of the few parts of the visit not shrouded in secrecy. Presidents Zuma and Mugabe held hands as they walked along the line of assembled dignitaries and once Mr Zuma had gone up the stairs to the aircraft, Mr Mugabe raised both his arms and with fists clenched, punched the air a few times. It looked...

HARARE - Robert Mugabe's Zanu (PF) has started recruiting youths for training in sophisticated murder and torture techniques for a massive campaign of violence against the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) soon after the World Cup, a report said. Investigations by The Zimbabwean have revealed that the vicious campaign of terror is expected to roll into motion in July, soon after the soccer World Cup ends in South Africa and the media spotlight shifts elsewhere. High-level sources within both Zanu (PF) and MDC-T as well as the security services said the purpose of this horrific plan, if it succeeds, was...

Farmers' lobby groups on Tuesday demanded clarity on a proposal that agricultural land become a "national asset", which they fear is a move towards nationalisation. Although Land Affairs director-general Thozi Gwanya said the government was not considering nationalisation, and that making land a national asset was just a land reform "option... Land invasion fears...talk of nationalisation of farms could be followed by land invasions, as happened in Zimbabwe... the Chinese communist model in which farmers pay rent to the state which owns the land. More than 90% of the 5.9 million hectares of land the state bought for emerging farmers...

Ten years to practiceSaturday 13th March 2010 Dear Family and Friends,As we come towards the end of our rainy season we hear the news that one in four Zimbabweans are in urgent need of food aid. We are not surprised. Since the start of the season 6 months ago, everyone has been commenting on the dramatic absence of crops on farms. Travel in any direction, towards any of our country's borders and you see grass, weeds and derelict farms. The best crops are those planted on roadsides and little squares of vacant land in urban areas. There has been...

For us it is a saddening sight - a magnificent bull elephant struck down in his old age. But for the starving of Zimbabwe, it was little short of a miracle. The carcass provided a vital source of food, and hundreds of desperate villagers in the Gonarezhou National Park descended on the dead animal within minutes of its discovery. Using machetes, axes and knives made from tin cans they set upon the six-ton carcass, which was found deep in scrubland.

For us it is a saddening sight - a magnificent bull elephant struck down in his old age. But for the starving of Zimbabwe, it was little short of a miracle. The carcass provided a vital source of food, and hundreds of desperate villagers in the Gonarezhou National Park descended on the dead animal within minutes of its discovery. Using machetes, axes and knives made from tin cans they set upon the six-ton carcass, which was found deep in scrubland.

The Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions. They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones. Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago. It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin. These...

SHERMAN, Texas – A Zimbabwean man who conspired with four compatriots to commit tax fraud amounting to millions of dollars in the United States was on Friday jailed for five years. The convicted man, Simbarashe Soko, who conspired with, among others, Karimanjira-Dumba Made, the son of Joseph Made, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Agricultural Mechanisation, was also ordered to undergo three years supervised release and pay restitution of $3 097 822.65. He was convicted after he changed his plea to guilty. He was arrested along with four others following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation in Dallas in...

In 1980, Zimbabwe’s dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar, but the currency's value eroded rapidly amid government spending, corruption and the seizure of privately-owned farms. By 2009, the highly regulated labor market boasted unemployment of 94%. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has printed an uncountable quantity of money resulting in massive inflation. At the same time, government-instituted price-caps have caused mass shortages of food, fuel and basic supplies. The circulated banknote is shipped with historical background and autographed Capitalistpig trading card. (Actual serial number will vary)

HARARE (AFP) – President Robert Mugabe said Wednesday that he and his partners in Zimbabwe's unity government agreed that "sanctions must go", a day after the European Union extended its restrictions on the country. "We are in agreement," Mugabe told reporters after a tourism conference in Harare. "We are all agreed that the sanctions must go." Mugabe and his erstwhile rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai formed a unity government nearly a year ago, aiming to end political unrest targeting mainly supporters of the premier's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). But EU leaders on Tuesday cited a lack of progress in...

EVERETT – A cat who wandered into the Everett Police Department’s South Precinct parking lot later was killed at the city’s animal shelter, upsetting the animal’s owners. Police have been having problems with neighborhood cats, many feral, urinating on patrol motorcycles, Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said. Police asked animal control officers to help trap the cats, he said. One of the cats, Atalanta, was brought to the Everett Animal Shelter on Jan. 28, city spokeswoman Kate Reardon said. The shelter wasn’t able to find the cat’s owner. The animal wasn’t tagged or micro-chipped, she said.

JOHANNESBURG - Last week's issue of The Zimbabwean, which is edited from Britain, leads with a report on the possible exchange of Chinese weapons for illegally mined diamonds in Zimbabwe (see below). If the information in this report is proved correct, it would indicate that the Mugabe regime is preparing a bloody coup to preserve itself in office, in defiance of its loss of the general election last year, its subsequent power-sharing deal with the Movement for Democratic Change, the Kimberley Process which regulates the global gem trade and a ruling of the High Court in Harare. The report suggests...

White-owned companies in Zimbabwe are to be forced to hand majority control to black businessmen in a move that could lead to chaos rivalling the seizure of the country's commercial farms. The new regulations demand that all foreign and locally owned companies hand over at least 51 per cent ownership to black Zimbabweans. Thousands of firms, including the Zimbabwean operations of giants such as Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and the mining company Rio Tinto, will be affected, and they must submit their plans to comply by March 1. Owners who fail to comply could be jailed. The new law...

White-owned companies in Zimbabwe are to be forced to hand majority control to black businessmen in a move that could lead to chaos rivalling the seizure of the country's commercial farms. The new regulations demand that all foreign and locally owned companies hand over at least 51 per cent ownership to black Zimbabweans. Thousands of firms, including the Zimbabwean operations of giants such as Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and the mining company Rio Tinto, will be affected, and they must submit their plans to comply by March 1. Owners who fail to comply could be jailed. The new law...

One by one the last white farmers are being beaten into submission. Four more had their farms seized by marauding gangs last week. “They do not want us whites,” one farmer said. Finaughty, 43, will never forget how his world came crashing down. One moment at his Manda farm there was stillness. Then came a burst of noise and confusion. A screaming, drunken mob hammered at the gates. Armed mobs encouraged by Robert Mugabe and his cronies forced Ray Finaughty and his family off their land It was the climax of a two-year eviction campaign against him. He had fought...

Inanke's prehistoric paintings are a celebration of life The trail to the great cave of Inanke in southern Zimbabwe begins confidently with arrows painted on bare patches of granite and soon vanishes into four miles of often pathless wandering through fields of shoulder-high grass, dense scrub forests and formidable thorn bushes. Without the direction of our guide, the archaeologist Paul Hubbard, our group would never have found this cave containing some of the most magnificent prehistoric paintings in the world. But reach the approximately 30-foot-long frieze of intricately varied paintings and you will find it free of the man-made barriers,...

Hi everyone! I just started blogging here and I thought I'd share my thoughts on the economy. But first about myself, Im 17 years old and live in Pawtucket Rode Island. I make a living as a profesional printer after I quit school and invented a revolutionary way to make money without working. I print it! YES! I can't believe no one ever thought of it before! I thought it up a year ago after I got fired from Wendys. I needed a quick way to make money so I printed it out on my computer using a scanner. I...

HARARE (AFP) – Zimbabwe is considering mortgaging its mineral wealth to offset the country's 5.4 billion dollar debt owed to multilateral donor agencies, a government report says. The ministry of finance report seen by AFP said various options were being considered for paying off the external debt, an essential step to secure new financing from lenders for 2010-2012. "A key conditionality for unlocking new financing of 7.5 billion -- 10 billion (dollars) ... evolves around the development of a Debt Relief and Arreas Clearance Strategy for the country's external debt overhang of 5.4 billion, of which 3.8 billion is in...