Category: Foreign

Mugabe’s decades-long grip on power was dramatically weakened as Zimbabwe’s military appeared to be in control of the country Wednesday as generals denied staging a coup but used state television to vow to target “criminals” close to President Robert Mugabe. Military vehicles blocked roads outside the parliament in Harare and senior soldiers delivered a late-night television address to the nation. “We wish to assure the nation that his excellency the president… and his family are safe and sound and their security is guaranteed,” Major General Sibusiso Moyo said, slowly reading…

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Saudi Arabia’s ambitious young crown prince has said he will lead his country back to “moderate Islam” as he announced plans for a vast new £380 million economic development zone. Prince Mohammed bin Salman told investors gathered in Riyadh that his economic modernisation plans would go hand-in-hand with with political reforms to guide the conservative kingdom away from severe Wahhabi Islam. “We are returning to what we were before – a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” the 32-year-old prince said. “We…

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A grieving widower allegedly caught a male nurse having sex with his wife’s corpse as he visited her one last time in hospital. The nurse was beaten by the grief-stricken partner before being handed over to police in the Bolivian capital La Paz. He was named locally last night as Grover Macuchapi, 27. He is now facing prosecution on charges of profaning a corpse and obscene acts. Police chief Douglas Uzquiano said the incident happened around an hour after the patient died at Hospital de Clinicas in La Paz on…

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Kate, wife of Queen Elizabeth’s grandson Prince William, Britain’s Duchess of Cambridge, danced with the famous Paddington Bear on Monday (October 16), delighting children on her return to royal duties after suffering acute morning sickness. Kate, last week made her first public appearance since it was announced in September she was expecting the couple’s third child. On Monday, she joined her husband and his brother Prince Harry at London’s Paddington station where they met children from charities they support who were heading off on a special trip on the Venice…

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United States has announced on Thursday that it will withdraw from the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization, accusing the body of “anti-Israel bias.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Washington would establish an “observer mission” to replace its representation at the Paris-based agency. The United States was angered in 2011 when UNESCO members granted Palestine full membership of the body, despite opposition from its ally Israel. Washington opposes any move by UN bodies to recognize the Palestinians as a state, believing that this must await a negotiated Middle East…

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After taking part in a charity marathon to help battle cancer, Tunisia’s health minister, Slim Chaker, died of a heart attack on Sunday, officials said. The 56-year-old, fell ill after running some 500 metres (yards) and then making a speech at the start of a race in the coastal town of Nabeul aimed at raising funds to build a clinic for children with cancer, his ministry said. He died later at a military hospital in Tunis. “I have lost a brother and a colleague,” Prime Minister Youssef Chahed wrote on…

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Great-grandson of Queen Elizabeth and third-in-line to the throne, Prince George has started school. The four-year-old little prince went to school without the company of his pregnant mother Kate to support him because she is suffering from severe morning sickness. George was taken by his father, Prince William, from their Kensington Palace home to Thomas’s Battersea school in southwest London, which says its most important rule is to “Be Kind” and charges almost 18,000 pounds ($23,490) per pupil per year. “We expect our pupils to make impressive progress as a…

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