HARARE: Zimbabwe will hold elections by June 29 to end a shaky unity government formed four years ago between President Robert Mugabe and his rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, state media reported yesterday. “It is imperative to have the elections by June 29 because we will no longer have a parliament by then and a country cannot run without a parliament,” The Herald newspaper quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as saying.
At least 30 die as boat capsizes off Gabon
CAPE ESTERIAS: At least 30 people died when their boat capsized off the Gabonese capital Libreville, journalists and rescue workers said yesterday. Police said the boat, which was carrying 65 people thought to be illegal immigrants, capsized in stormy weather overnight as it was travelling from Nigeria to Libreville. A gendarme said there were at least eight survivors among the passengers thought to be illegal immigrants from Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso.
Australia says sorry for forced adoptions
Sydney: Australia yesterday apologised for the brutal and often illegal forced adoption of tens of thousands of babies born mostly to unmarried mothers between the 1950s and 1970s. “To you, the mothers who were betrayed by a system that gave you no choice and subjected you to manipulation, mistreatment and malpractice, we apologise,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said to applause from 800 people affected by the policy. The adoptions were driven largely by religious groups.
Argentine Nobel peace laureate defends pope
VATICAN CITY: Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel defended Pope Francis yesterday against accusations he failed to speak out against repression during the 1976-83 military dictatorship in their native Argentina. “The pope had nothing to do with the dictatorship. He was not an accomplice of the dictatorship,” Esquivel told reporters after a meeting with Francis in the Vatican. “He preferred a silent diplomacy, to ask about the missing, about the oppressed. There is no proof that he was an accomplice because he was never an accomplice. Of this I am sure,” he said.
German mum jailed for killing five newborns
BERLIN: A German court sentenced a married mother of two to nine years in jail yesterday for killing five of her babies whose births she had concealed.
The 29-year-old woman had admitted during the trial in the northern town of Flensburg to secretly giving birth and immediately killing the five newborns between 2006 and 2012. Three of the infants were suffocated and two stabbed with scissors, the court concluded, finding the woman, who was not named, guilty of five counts of manslaughter. Although the trial was unable to clarify why the woman killed the infants, she had said in questioning by the police that her husband did not want any more children.
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