 | Perspective Volume XIV 
Sunday Nov 10, 2002
Perspective is a weekly features of unorthodox news reports from around the globe. Some of the reports serve to prove the point that we Nigerians are not as unique as we may be thinking. To put any news report in Perspective please send a note to
perpective@ekiti.com
|
| 
Headlines
Inmate mistakenly released from troubled Missouri jail Back To TopST. LOUIS (AP) — A prisoner's mistaken release from the St. Louis jail marks the latest in a series of inmate mix-ups that has angered the mayor, who last month tapped a new superintendent and threatened to privatize the lockup.Officials said Jerome Jones Jr., 34, was released Thursday afternoon from the medium-security lockup known as the city's workhouse, where he was being held on kidnapping, burglary and weapons charges. Workers later learned Jones' 52-year-old father, Jerome Jones Sr., was the one who should have been freed after he reportedly paid back child support. The younger Jones was taken back into custody hours later after the Jones family learned of the mistake, and he agreed to be returned to the jail. "This is very frustrating because we put a lot of time and effort into developing new procedures to ensure this thing wouldn't happen, but any procedure is only as good as the people trying to implement that procedure," said Ed Bushmeyer, the city's public safety director. "What this shows is that the policies are not being uniformly followed. We need to enforce all the policies, all the time. When it comes to releasing inmates, 99 percent accuracy is not good enough." Thursday's mistaken release was the latest this year at the jail -- including the escape of five inmate Feb. 23 who slipped out unnoticed until an off-duty jail cook recongized them on the street and called in. Messages left Thursday night with city corrections commissioner Dora Schriro and Mayor Francis Slay's chief of staff, Jeff Rainford, were not immediately returned. Angered by the mix-ups, Slay last month tapped an aide to the St. Louis police chief to temporarily oversee the workhouse. Police Capt. Paul Nocchiero was to work at the jail until at least Nov. 1, when a new superintendent was expected to start as successor to Dennis Blackman, who was fired in July. "If it becomes obvious things are not improving dramatically, I'll take a hard look at privatizing management of the operation," Slay said. Source:http://www.courttv.com/people/2002/1025/inmate_ap.html
US State of New Mexico to Decide if her 'Idiots' Can Vote Back To TopSANTA FE, New Mexico (Reuters) - New Mexico voters will decide on Tuesday whether they want "idiots" and "insane persons" to vote in their state. Under the state's Constitution, drafted in 1912, "idiots" and "insane persons," as well as those "convicted of a felonious or infamous crime" are currently prohibited from voting. Proposed Amendment 2 on the November 5 ballot would strike the terms "idiots" and "insane persons" from the Constitution. The measure will better reflect current understanding of mental health and remove archaic language, supporters said. "There are so many varieties of mental illness with people who are perfectly capable of making a decision," said Bureau of Elections official Denise Lamb. "I'm more worried about unstable people with guns than I am about unstable people voting," Lamb said. The same type of amendment, with different wording, was on the ballot once before in the mid 1990s but did not pass because voters interpreted the wording as denying people a right to vote, Lamb said. "I think it's good to bring your Constitution more in line with reality," she said. The state's nonpartisan research group, Legislative Council Services, said the arguments in favor of the amendment are that it will remove wording that is "archaic, offensive and meaningless from the list of people ineligible to vote." "The terms 'idiots' and 'insane persons' may not have been considered offensive in 1912, but today they are an embarrassment," the group said in a guide to voters. It said the opposing argument suggests that removing the terms "without replacing it with terms that more accurately reflect contemporary understanding of mental health may be too sweeping a change." The proposed amendment also lowers the voting age from 21 to 18 years, bringing the voting age in compliance with federal requirements. Early voter Kathleen MacRae said changing the language made sense to her. "I'm for liberalizing all voting laws. Voting should be open and easy for everyone," she said. "And God knows there are already a lot of idiots voting." Source:http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1674719
Iranian Woman Bus Driver Puts Men in Back Seat Back To TopTEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's first female bus driver has taken to the road in a small victory for gender equality that has already forced men to take a back seat.Seating on Iranian buses has been segregated since the 1979 Islamic revolution, with women forced to sit at the back so that they do not distract the normally male driver. But on Masoumeh Bolaghi's bus, the seating order will be reversed for the same reason. Official news agency IRNA said university graduate Bolaghi had taken to the wheel in the city of Karaj, about 38 miles west of Tehran, Thursday. IRNA quoted Bolaghi as saying she hoped her example would have "a positive effect on women's morale." Iran started its first women taxi driver service earlier this year in the holy city of Qom. But the women drivers are only allowed to pick up female passengers. Source:http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1674720
French Woman Who Undresed During Airport Screening Fined $2 by US Court Back To TopEVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A French woman accused of undressing during an airport security screening pleaded guilty and paid a $2 fine.Eliane Yvonne Marcele Aguillaume, 56, of Paris, was ordered Friday to pay $1 for a count of public indecency and $1 for resisting law enforcement. She will be required to pay court costs of about $130. Aguillaume allegedly stripped to her waist last Monday at Evansville Regional Airport in an angry response to a security screener's attempt to search her with a metal-detecting wand. During a routine security screening, Aguillaume kept reaching inside her sweater, forcing guards to search her again. Aguillaume then became upset and removed her sweater, shirt and bra before trying to pull away as an officer tried to handcuff her, police said. She later dropped to the ground and refused to get up. Her attorney, Glenn Grampp, said after Friday's hearing that his client was embarrassed by the event, which he attributed to a misunderstanding that developed from a language barrier. Source:http://www.courttv.com/people/2002/1104/airport_ap.html
Monkeys on trial in the Supreme Court of Delhi Back To TopMonkeys stood trial in the Supreme Court of Delhi. The court considered numerous complaints of the local population on the primates. The problem is that a large group of monkeys walks about the Delhi streets and gives no peace to the people. Sometimes the troublesome monkeys are very vindictive and pert, they even pose real danger to passers-by when they have no bananas to treat the monkeys to.Indians are known as really very respectful toward animals, especially the sacred ones, but they seem to have lost all patience that they even addressed the Supreme Court. The matter of the fact is that monkeys nearly frustrated the elections to the legislative assembly in Delhi this year. Several macaques penetrated into the building of the polytechnic institute where the polling station was located. The hooligans found voting papers which turned out really very tasty for them. But for an immediate coming of polling station employees and police, the elections would have been frustrated and the voting papers completely eaten. The people came and rescued the rest of the papers. According to the court decision, a municipal corporation is to develop a complex plan for catching, vaccination and sterilization of primates for further removal out of the city. Source:http://funreports.com/2002/10/31/38976.html
Man escaped jail but Sheriff got to his destination before him Back To TopTEXARKANA, Ark. (AP) — A man who escaped from jail in didn't get far.A sheriff spotted Jason Ward, 29, of Texarkana, at a friend's house shortly after his escape. Ward escaped from the Bowie County Correctional Center Wednesday morning, apparently climbing over a 9-foot wall topped with razor wire, investigators said. Sheriff James Prince got a tip that Ward might be headed for a friend's house so the sheriff went there and waited. "He came walking up to the front door," Prince said. The sheriff called police and they caught Ward after chasing him on foot. Ward, had been held on a failure-to-appear charge in a drug case, was arrested on an escape charge. Source:http://www.courttv.com/people/2002/1031/escape_ap.html
21 Men Guilty of Intoxicating one of their kind-A Pig That Attended Their Party Back To TopWINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Members of a Wake Forest University fraternity accused of mistreating a pig pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of animal neglect.The 200-pound intoxicated pig was found in a ditch the morning after an April party in a park. The fraternity members were charged under the state's animal cruelty statutes. The plea deal with 21 members of Sigma Phi Epsilon will allow the students to avoid criminal convictions. The students will enter a supervised deferred prosecution program for six months, perform community service, write an essay on animal cruelty, and meet with community members to discuss the responsible care of animals. The school has suspended recognition of the fraternity for three years. Cases against two fraternity members were dismissed after prosecutors determined they were not involved in procuring the pig. Source:http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/10/28/offbeat.slow.chase.ap/index.html
3% of women 'happy with their bodies' Back To TopOnly 3% of women in the UK are happy with their body, a new survey suggests.Of 5,000 women questioned, 73% said they thought about their size or shape every day. And six out of 10 women said their body image made them feel depressed. Some 65% felt their life would improve considerably if they were happy with their body, in the image survey commissioned by the fortnightly women's magazine REAL. A total of 91% of women were unhappy with their hips and thighs, 77% with their waist and 78% said they had cellulite. The average age of the women who took part in the survey was 33. A total of 84% of those whose weight was considered normal for their proportion wished they were slimmer, by an average of nine pounds. Some 68% blamed their body obsession and insecurities on other women who they said were most likely to criticise their shape and looks. 'Most beautiful women of all time' 1: Marilyn Monroe 2: Audrey Hepburn 3: Princess Diana 4: Grace Kelly 5: Sophia Loren 6: Catherine Zeta-Jones Sian Rees, the magazine's editor, said: "A woman's body shape dominates her whole life - it's a modern day obsession. "One of the driving forces is that women are increasingly influenced by celebrities - who let's face it don't live a normal life - and it can make a cruel comparison for real women trying to juggle work and family." Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2402363.stm
Florida Approves Move to Protect Pregnant Pigs Back To TopMIAMI (Reuters) - Florida voters on Tuesday resoundingly approved a state constitutional amendment that would prohibit commercial hog farmers from housing pregnant pigs in cages too small to turn around in.The proposal, placed on the ballot by animal rights activists, passed 55 percent to 45 percent, state election tallies showed. But the measure will have only limited effect. Among Florida's 10 commercial hog farms, only two use the small stalls known as "gestation crates" to house pregnant pigs, and one of those two farms is going out of business in December, according to a Miami Herald report. Hog farmers say the stalls are necessary because sows are aggressive and will attack each other to get more food if housed together. Housed in separate cages, they receive individualized nutrition and are prevented from harming each other, they said http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1686793
Mosquito nets make cheap but beautiful wedding dresses in Uganda Back To TopHealth department officials in the eastern Uganda district of Tororo have warned villagers not to misuse the mosquito nets intended to control the spread of malaria.The warning is intended to stop villagers turning mosquito nets into cheap bridal gowns in the on-going mass weddings ahead of Christmas. The God-fearing but poverty-stricken villagers are being encouraged by their parish priests to graduate from their customary marriages to Christian weddings so that they spend the coming Christmas holidays as special people in the eyes of God. While the bridegrooms are finding it easy to buy second-hand coats and neckties for the ceremony, the brides appear to have difficulty raising money to purchase sparkling-white wedding gowns. They have therefore resorted to pulling down the spotless white mosquito nets in their bedrooms. And the tailors in the villages have turned the mosquito nets into simple, but impressive bridal gowns. The most impressive display of the gowns made from the mosquito nets was witnessed in the border town of Malaba last Sunday. Nearly all 29 brides at the ceremony sported sparkling white gowns that were originally mosquito nets. There was a similar display of the unique gowns in several churches in Tororo town. Now Tororo Director of Health Services Dr David Okumu has issued a warning to the village communities to stop turning the mosquito nets into cheap bridal gowns. According to Dr Okumu, mosquito nets are the best weapon for fighting mosquitoes that transmit malaria, and should not leave the village bedrooms. He told me that aid organisations like Plan International, who are giving the properly treated nets to impoverished families free of charge, are bound to get upset if the villagers continue misusing the nets. The born-again pastors in Tororo are planning another mass wedding next Saturday. It remains to be seen whether the new batch of wedding couples will heed the warning of the Tororo medical chiefs to keep away from the mosquito nets. Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2406825.stm
Hundreds of Prostitutes marched on the French Senate Back To TopPARIS (Reuters) - Hundreds of masked prostitutes marched on the French Senate on Tuesday to protest against a government plan to create the crime of "passive soliciting," which could have them jailed just for standing in the street."Six months in jail for a smile!" read one banner held up in the crowd of women, many of whom donned Halloween masks or sunglasses and head scarves to hide their identity. The law, part of the conservative government's crime crackdown, would also allow authorities to confiscate the residence permits of foreign prostitutes. More than half of France's 15,000 to 18,000 prostitutes are foreigners, mostly from eastern Europe and France's former African colonies. The bill promises leniency for foreign street-walkers who denounce or testify against their pimps. "How can you expect prostitutes to denounce people who threaten their families? If they are made into criminals, they'll need their pimps more than ever," said Corinne Monnet, of the Lyon-based association Cabiria, which defends the interests of prostitutes. Prostitutes fear the legislation will force them to conduct their activities secretly and quickly, making them more vulnerable to violence and forcing them to accept clients who refuse to use condoms. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's sweeping bill has come under fire from human rights groups as dangerous and repressive for giving police new powers to pursue suspects, cracking down on beggars and toughening sentences for teenage offenders. Some of the marchers chanted slogans teasing Sarkozy, such as: "Instead of a ban, let's have some fun." A center-right alliance behind President Jacques Chirac won parliamentary elections in June on pledges to fight crime. Although the bill has yet to be examined by parliament, Sarkozy's crusade has already had an effect. Pamela, a 35-year-old mother of two from Ivory Coast, said the prospect of the tough new law had cut her nightly take from about 150 euros (dollars) down to as low as 20 euros a night. "The clients are afraid," said Pamela, who works out of her small van in the Bois de Vincennes in eastern Paris. She said she also had to put up with traffic police towing the van away two or three times a week. Public prosecutors in the southwestern city of Bordeaux created a legal precedent last month by convicting four clients of prostitutes on charges of "sexual exhibitionism" after they were caught having sex in their cars. Prostitution is legal in France, although current laws make overt soliciting punishable by fine. Source:http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1686786
Bank Robber Let Down by His Invisibility Spell Back To TopTEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian police are looking for a phony sorcerer who conned a man into believing he was invisible and could rob banks, the Jam-e Jam newspaper said Thursday.Customers at a Tehran bank quickly overpowered the deluded robber after he started snatching banknotes from their hands. Appearing in court, the repentant thief said he paid five million rials ($625) to a man who gave him some spells and told him to tie them to his arm to become invisible. "I made a mistake. I understand now what a big trick was played on me," the would-be bank robber was reported as telling the judge. His name was not given. Source:http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1694491
Divorce Up For Grab on a Charity Fundraiser Back To TopSYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian law firm has offered up a free divorce as a prize in a Red Cross auction to raise funds for victims of the Bali bombings.The divorce is just one of 100 prizes up for auction on Sunday to raise funds for the Australian Red Cross which is helping victims of the October 12 blasts on the Indonesian resort island that killed more than 180 people and wounded hundreds. Teena Gilbert, co-organizer of the charity auction at the Tracy Village Social and Sports Club in the northern city of Darwin, said the A$1,000 ($560) prize was being donated by a legal practice. "When my assistant first told me I thought, 'Oh God', I wouldn't like my husband to see me bidding for a divorce," Gilbert told Reuters Thursday . "We hope to raise a lot of money for Bali. It's a horrific tragedy and it's touched a lot of hearts," Gilbert said. Law firm owner Vanessa Farmer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp she did not necessarily expect the highest bidder for the prize to want a divorce. "But I've indicated we're going to honor it," she said. Source:http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1694469
A Burglar Leaves ID and Family Photo at Crime Scene Back To TopWARREN, Michigan (AP) -- A man accused of robbing a grocery store made it easy for police by accidentally dropping a pair of calling cards: identification and a family photo.Terry Neal Tavi was arrested Sunday at his Madison Heights home and later charged with larceny from a person, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens reported. Police say Tavi grabbed several $20 bills from an open cash register as customers waited in line at a Farmer Jack store in Warren early Sunday. Witnesses said the only male in the family photo dropped at the scene was the man who stole the cash. Officers who went to Tavi's home to arrest him found the missing money in a bedroom after the suspect told them where to look, according to police reports. Source:http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/11/09/offbeat.crook.clues.ap/index.html
A US Courthouse surrenders to Rats Back To TopDES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Polk County officials have decided to surrender the courthouse basement to rats.County officials said Tuesday they plan to abandon the basement within two weeks, possibly in favor of rented space across the street. Court records and more than a dozen employees will have to be transferred. Rats have been spotted in the basement for decades, but the rodent population has grown and the rats have become braver in recent months, partly due to spring cleaning, said Bruce Greiner, director of the county's general services department. "Once we cleaned up all that stuff down there, we kind of took away their places to hide," Greiner said. There have been dozens of rat sightings in the past 90 days, including one that invaded a judge's restroom vanity on the second floor and another seen leaping from a desk drawer on the first floor. Court employees have been warned to keep food in glass or metal containers and to clap their hands when walking down dark hallways. "Just because of the sheer nature of the issue, we think that we're better off to move people out of the basement," County Manager Teree Caldwell-Johnson said. "I don't think that we would ever move people back into that basement." Source:http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/11/09/offbeat.courthouse.rats.ap/index.html
Minnesota man elected to 2 offices Including City Mayor (AKA dog catcher and weed inspector) Back To TopDENNISON, Minnesota (AP) -- The 81 voters in this small town liked Dave Nash so much that they elected him to his first public office on Tuesday. In fact, they elected him to two of them.Nash, 62, was elected to the city council post to which he had been appointed last December. He got 26 votes. He also got 36 write-in votes for mayor -- enough to win the job. "This [election result] is real good, because there's lots of work to do here and we need a whole city council to do it," Nash said. "We've got 168 people in town and we ought to be a growing community." Things didn't look good for Dennison city government going into Election Day. There were only two candidates listed for four seats on the city council and nobody was on the ballot for the mayor's job, since being mayor means being city dog catcher and weed inspector for only $100 a month. In the end, it turned out all right. With write-in candidates, the new city council will have just one vacancy: Nash's, when he steps down to become mayor. Source:http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/11/07/offbeat.twice.elected/index.html
In this kingdom female make all the choices including when, where, who to mate with ... Back To TopWASHINGTON (AP) -- In the eternal war between the sexes, the lady side-blotched lizard wins it all: she selects her many mates, decides where they'll live and even determines if they will have sons or daughters.Virtually every element of the mating and reproducing cycle of the small American lizard is controlled by choices made by the female, said Ryan Calsbeek, a biologist at the Institute of Environment at UCLA. "This is the ultimate example of a female having her cake and eating it too," said Calsbeek, the first author of a study appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It would be like a human female who marries a short, dumpy rich guy and then has an affair with a muscular 20-year-old to have a handsome son who grows up in a mansion and goes to the best schools." The side-blotched lizard is the most common lizard in the American west. It lives among rocks west of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. The animal is small -- with the male reaching about 2.3 inches and the female about half that -- but it has a complex mating and reproduction system, said Calsbeek. Generally, the female picks the mate she'll live with. Calsbeek said he and his co-author observed that the female generally prefers a big male who lives on a big rock in the best location. To see if the female was selecting the choice living site or the choice male, the researchers moved the rocks around, putting the big males on poor rocks and the little males on the best rocks in the finest neighborhoods. The female lizards seemed to prize comfort over all else, choosing small males with the fancy rocks as the first mate and live-in partner. But that's not the end of her choices. Calsbeek said the female is "incredibly promiscuous," commonly mating with five or six males per reproductive cycle. To see which male lizards are siring the female's young, the researchers did molecular tests for paternity and found the lady lizard was very clever, indeed. The female collected the sperm from many partners in a special body cavity, called the spermatheca, before it was allowed to fertilize her eggs, Calsbeek said. Then, somehow, the female caused the sperm from big males to make sons, while the sperm from the small males was used to make daughters. "We don't understand how the females do it," said Calsbeek, but the theory is that her body somehow selects the sperm's fate based on the sex chromosomes. Just as in humans, a single male sperm can carry either the X or the Y chromosome, while the female egg carries only the X chromosome. If the Y chromosome unites with the egg, it creates a male. If it's the X chromosome, the offspring is female. "We found that the females were mating with small male that she was living with, but would also mate with the big males," said Calsbeek. "Then she allows the big males to make sons, and the small males to make daughters. "It appears to be ... an incredibly refined ability of the female to manipulate the investment of her partners," she said. Source:http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/11/04/lizards.sex.ap/index.html
Vietnam internet dissident got 4 years jail term Back To TopA Vietnamese dissident has been jailed for four years for publishing criticism of the Communist government on the internet.Le Chi Quang, a 32-year-old lawyer, was convicted of "acts of propaganda" against the state during the one-day trial in Hanoi, a court official said. Foreign journalists were not allowed to attend the trial. The conviction came as Vietnam's internet service providers (ISPs) confirmed that the authorities have blocked access to the BBC's Vietnamese language website. Le Chi Quang was arrested and detained in February after being accused of posting several essays on the internet which condemned the government for its land and sea border agreements with China. Other essays praised fellow well-known dissidents Nguyen Thanh Giang and Vu Cao Quan. Despite Vietnam's constitutional guarantees of a free press, in reality dissidents take considerable risks if they speak out. The verdict in Quang's case has implications for other dissidents awaiting trial. A prominent Vietnamese writer, Nguyen Vu Binh, was arrested in September, also for writing critical essays on the border agreements which were then distributed over the internet. Last month the government tightened access to the internet with regulations which require websites to be licensed. The BBC's Vietnamese language site has been blocked for a week. Internet users see only a bogus password prompt or a message to contact their ISP. The BBC's Hanoi correspondent Clare Arthurs says sources at two ISPs have confirmed the erection of a firewall - a computer security measure which prevents internet users from reaching the particular BBC web address. Government authorities have declined to comment on the firewall. The BBC Vietnamese website carries a range of news and information including interviews with dissidents. It has been gaining in popularity among Vietnam's 1.3m internet users, with the number of hits running at about 180,000 a week. On Thursday, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh told the BBC that Vietnam was fully aware of the importance of the internet. She says Vietnam uses firewalls against pornographic sites or those which incite people or encourage violence. Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2418791.stm
Uganda's first indigenous helicopter Not Allowed to Fly on Exhibition Back To TopOne particular exhibit has been drawing by far the most attention at an East African trade exhibition in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.Large crowds have been gathering around a red and white object, three metres long and less than two metres high made of scrap metal. It is Uganda's first home-built helicopter - designed by boys from the Katwe Youth Development Project. One of them, Joseph Kantinti Mbazira, told me how they came up with the idea after watching helicopters flying overhead. "We wanted to do this for ourselves so we went to Entebbe [airport] to see how the helicopters worked," he said. Joseph told me that, with its engine adapted from a water pump, the helicopter can fly about four feet off the ground or three feet off the ground if it is carrying a pilot. But he is keen to get more help to develop it. After a great deal of discussion at the exhibition, there was a call for a collection of money to put some petrol into the helicopter. Rather dangerously, the rotor blades began whirring at roughly about my neck height. With the blades rotating, the crowd tried to persuade the pilot to get the helicopter off the ground. Fearing a decapitation and remembering that Uganda's only independent newspaper was temporarily shut down recently for reporting that a helicopter had been shot down, I made a hasty retreat. In fact, due to safety reasons the organizers of the trade fair banned the helicopter from taking off so two people wearing crash helmets held the helicopter down. But however crudely made it may be, the crowd seemed pleased. This was after all made in Uganda. It was our chopper. "At least our boys can do something developmental," said one Uganda man. Another said it made him feel proud and he would like the government to invest money in the project. And when I asked one impressed onlooker if he would fly in the machine he said: "Yes of course". "It's impressive. This is fit for the Third World. I commend them and urge them to continue with their efforts." Now I just hope the team get help to improve the machine. Although too many helicopters flying four feet off the ground could make Kampala a very dangerous place. Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2406063.stm
Tony Blair banned from Zimbabwe Back To TopThe government of Zimbabwe has announced that all British visitors to the country will need visas from now on.It also says it has imposed a travel ban on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his ministers and senior British Government officials. The moves appear to be in retaliation for a British decision that visitors from Zimbabwe would have to apply for visas to enter the Britain, unless they already have right of abode. On Thursday, the European Union accused President Robert Mugabe's government of channelling food aid to its own supporters and ignoring opposition activists, as millions face starvation. Speaking about reports that foreign food aid was being diverted a Danish minister said that such behaviour was unacceptable. Last weekend, a United States official warned that the US may have to take "intrusive" measures to ensure that food aid was properly distributed. Zimbabwe has denied the allegations and accused the US of preparing to invade. Meanwhile, the treason trial of Zimbabwe opposition rival Morgan Tsvangirai has been postponed until February. The new visa restrictions for Britons, which come into effect on Friday, were announced on the state radio station, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. The broadcast also outlined the ban on members of the British Government saying: "The Zimbabwe Government has imposed a travel ban on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his cabinet, junior ministers and heads of his government departments as part of its efforts to safeguard the country's sovereignty." Earlier this year, the EU imposed a travel ban on Mr Mugabe and other members of the country's ruling elite following disputed elections. Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2419923.stm
| ||||||