Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe/Johannesburg  - Supporters of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe gathered in the farming town of Chinhoyi on Saturday to mark their leader's 85th birthday at a lavish party, as more than half the country's population faces abject poverty.

Mugabe's birthday fell on February 21 but loyalists from his political party Zanu PF postponed the celebrations as they were raising money for the event.

Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered in a decree on Saturday that the country's presidential poll, which had been slated for August, be brought forward to April.

The Afghan Election Commission will therefore conduct presidential, parliamentary, provincial council, district council and municipality elections in accordance with the constitution, the decree said.

According to the Afghan constitution, the presidential election should be held at least 30 days before the end of the presidential term on May 22.

Harare - Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's attendance at the lavish 85th birthday party of his rival, President Robert Mugabe, was in doubt Saturday, after a party official ruled out his presence at the controversial bash.

"He (Tsvangirai) will not be attending today's celebration as far as I know," Tsvangirai's Communication and Information Minister Nelson Chamisa told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Women and children's development minister Renuka Chowdhury on Friday sacked National Commission for Women (NCW) member Nirmala Venkatesh for her alleged failure to conduct an unbiased inquiry into the Mangalore pub attack.

In a notification, Chowdhury said Nirmala was sent to probe the assault on women in a pub by the Sri Rama Sene, but she went public and "acted in a way which was detrimental to public interest".

Nirmala was also charged with making the report public before it was submitted to the government and for making derogatory remarks that women should not wear revealing and provocative dresses, a statement she retracted.

Lalu Prasad always boasts of the 'turnaround' he brought about in the railways, but a parliamentary panel report seeks to prove his claims are a bunch of lies

Here is an easy question: what is it that every rail passenger in India sees at stations, but Union railway minister Lalu Prasad cannot? The answer is: rodents in coaches, unusable toilets, unclean platforms and trains, no drinking water, poor sanitary conditions and dirty kitchens.

A day after he exited office, Somnath Chatterjee bared his heart to the media, saying he almost quit as speaker the day the NDA sent a letter signed by AB Vajpayee accusing him of being biased. "Atalji paid me a visit and talked me out of it. He explained he had not signed the letter voluntarily," Somnath said.

He described his expulsion from the CPI(M) as one of the most painful moments of his life, "The other being the death of my parents."

The parting of ways not withstanding, Somnath continues to assert his communist identity. "I remain a communist. Communism is not the monopoly of a political party," he said.