Harare, Feb 7: A recent report has revealed that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is so paranoid about his security during his foreign visits that he pays a special allowance of 5,000 dollars a day to his guards.

Mugabe, who turns 86 this month, keeps a crack team of security officials from Zimbabwe’s secret service, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), who were assigned to keep him safe during his official visit to Switzerland, Italy and Denmark.

Harare, Dec 30 : Twenty-two people, mainly children under five years, have died of measles in Zimbabwe in the past three weeks, state media reported Tuesday.

The Herald daily, which is close to President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, said the 22 had missed out on being vaccinated when the health department undertook a nationwide mass immunization programme earlier in the year.

All 22 dead were from the Makoni area, about 200 km east of Harare, where a further 90 people have also been confirmed infected by the highly contagious respiratory virus.

Harare  - Zimbabwe's military has begun to withdraw from a contentious diamond field as private investors move in, the head of a South African mining company investing in the area was quoted Thursday as saying.

The state-controlled daily Herald newspaper cited David Kassel, chief executive of Johannesburg-based New Reclamation, as saying that his company had hired 200 private security guards to replace the military around the field in eastern Chiadzwa, which has controlled the 60,000-hectare site since last year.

Harare - Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his ministers returned to the coalition government's weekly cabinet meeting Wednesday after a three-week absence.

The nine-month-old power-sharing government between the country's powerful president, Robert Mugabe, and Tsvangirai appeared in danger of collapsing in mid-October when the prime minister pulled out of cabinet meetings out of frustration with Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

Harare - Popular Zimbabwean politician Roy Bennett appeared in the High Court in Harare on Monday for the scheduled start of his terrorism trial.

Bennett, 52, is charged with conspiring to overthrow President Robert Mugabe, in a case his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says is a trumped-up attempt at keeping him out of government.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had earmarked the former white farmer for the post of deputy agriculture minister in the coalition between the MDC and Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

Harare - Two people were slightly injured after a passenger aircraft of Zimbabwe's state-owned airline crashed on take-off after colliding with a herd of wild pigs, officials said Thursday.

Trsnsport Minister Nicholas Goche told the state-controlled Herald newspaper that the Air Zimbabwe MA60 plane, on a flight to the western city of Bulawayo on Tuesday was about to lift off from Harare airport's runway shortly after dark when the pigs ran into its path.

Harare  - Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo and current head of Southern Africa's regional political alliance, was in Zimbabwe for talks Monday with the partners in the country's stricken unity government, officials said.

His arrival precedes a summit in Maputo on Thursday of the Southern African Development Community, the region's 15-nation bloc, said James Maridadi, spokesman for Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Harare  A mob seized a white-owned farm and opened fire on farm workers on the property, seriously injuring three of them, victims of the attack said Friday.

The farm was being seized for a deputy governor of Zimbabwe's central bank, according to farmers union members.

The shooting on Wilfrieda farm in the Chinhoyi district about 100 km north of Harare marked a serious worsening of tensions in the country and its coalition government amid a sudden renewal of violent incidents led by President Robert Mugabe's security forces and supporters.

Harare - The United Nations torture rapporteur Manfred Nowak refused entry to Zimbabwe said Thursday he believed President Robert Mugabe may be trying to cover-up a resurgence in political violence.

Nowak was addressing a press conference in Johannesburg after being turned back by immigration officials at Harare airport Wednesday night on the grounds that he didn't have "clearance" from the foreign ministry.

Harare - The United Nations's special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, was flying back to South Africa on Thursday after being barred from entering Zimbabwe where he was to investigate allegations of torture by the security forces.

A major diplomatic spat between Zimbabwe and the UN now looms after Nowak was detained by immigration officials at Harare airport on Wednesday evening and made take the first flight out of the country back to Johannesburg on Thursday.

Harare  - The heads of the umbrella organization for all of Zimbabwe's non-governmental organizations were arrested on Sunday amid worsening signs of the disintegration of the country's fragile coalition government.

Cephas Zinumhwe, chief executive of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), and its chairperson, Dadirai Chikwengo, were arrested at the small airport in the northern resort town of Victoria Falls after a NANGO meeting, spokesman Farai Ngirande said.

Ngirande said they were accused of "holding a public political meeting without approval" - a claim NANGO rejects - and were held by police overnight.

Harare  - Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has again raised his concerns over the failure to implement the power- sharing deal he agreed to with President Robert Mugabe last year, according to media reports Wednesday.

Tsvangirai, during a visit to Mozambique on Tuesday, signalled his commitment to the unity government but noted that would only "re- engage if the power-sharing agreement is implemented in its entirety," the reports said.

Harare  -Zimbabwe's High Court on Friday ordered the release on bail of deputy agriculture minister-designate Roy Bennett, whose reimprisonment this week led his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to boycott the country's unity government.

Bennett, 52, is charged with possession of weapons with the intent to cause sabotage, terrorism and insurgency in 2006. He denies the charges.

Harare  - Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday announced his party would boycott the country's unity government, accusing President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party of failing to keep its side of the country's historic power-sharing agreement.

Tsvangirai said he was pulling ministers from his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) out of a coalition cabinet, while stressing he was not "pulling out officially" from the eight-month-old power-sharing government.

Harare -  A court in Zimbabwe will consider on Friday a bail application of minister appointee Roy Bennett - two days after his original bail on charges of terrorism was revoked.

Bennett, a white former-farmer and a member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), is due to stand trial on October 19 on charges of possession of weapons with intent to commit banditry, insurgency and terrorism.

Harare - Zimbabwe's Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the government cannot prosecution a leading human rights activist accused of plotting against the government of Robert Mugabe on the grounds that her abduction and torture in custody had violated her rights.

Harare, Sep. 27 : Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe''s wife has established a giant dairy on the country’s nationalized farm-land, supplying a million litres of milk a year to Nestlé food giant.

Grace Mugabe set up Gushungo Dairy Estate in Mazowe following the ouster of the previous white owner of the farm, who was forced to sell the land to the state''s Agricultural Rural Development Authority, after facing a violent campaign under the land seizure drive.

Harare  - The International Monetary Fund said Friday it had allocated a 510 million dollar loan to Zimbabwe, but finance minister Tendai Biti said the government cannot afford to take the loan.

The allocation follows an agreement by the G20 group of the world's leading economies in April to increase to US$750 billion the IMFs support to economies stricken by the world recession.

But Biti told German Press Agency dpa: "It's not a grant, its a loan. It attracts interest.

Harare - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will tell regional leaders at a summit in the Democratic Republic of Congo next week that Western sanctions are to blame for his country's failure to quickly emerge from an economic crisis, his spokesman said Thursday.

Harare  - The cost of living in Zimbabwe edged down by one per cent in August, as locally-manufactured goods began to return to supermarket shelves, the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) reported Wednesday.

CCZ director Rosemary Siyachitema said the average basket of goods for a poor family dropped to 495 US dollars last month, while the cost of food alone fell 4 per cent.

Siyachitema said buying domestic Zimbabwean products would help develop local industry, and that with increased production, home- grown prices would come down and become competitive with imported goods.