Officials have said that a worker at a wildlife orphanage in Zimbabwe was killed by a lion that escaped from a cage mistakenly left open.

It has been reported that Friday Robyn Lotz, 26, was killed on Tuesday at the Chipangali Wildlife Orphanage, which takes in orphaned, abandoned or injured animals.

With Captain Tillakaratne Dilshan's unbeaten 60 runs, Sri Lanka has managed to beat Zimbabwe comprehensively. Sri Lanka defeated Zimbabwe by nine-wickets in the rain-curtailed one-dayer in the tri-nation series at Bulawayo in Zimbabwe.

Now each team has equal points in the table with one victory each. India is the third team to participate in the tournament.

Seven years after suspending its voting rights over a failure to pay back loans, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday elected to make Zimbabwe a full voting member.

But still Zimbabwe will be given only a limited access to the IMF's lending facilities. The impoverished African country still owes the IMF about $140 million though Zimbabwe paid back some of its outstanding loans in 2006.

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.

Rome - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday told a United Nations food summit in Rome that international sanctions are hampering his country's agricultural reforms and harming its farmers.

He also accused "our neo-colonialist enemies" of wishing to see his southern African nation dependent on food imports.

Mugabe ended his speech wih an appeal: "May Western countries please remove their illegal and inhuman sanctions on my country and its people."

Harare - The head of Zimbabwe's national labour movement, detained for four days for holding an "illegal meeting," has been freed after a magistrate told police they had no right to interfere with union business, lawyers said Friday.

Lovemore Matombo and four other officials of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions were arrested in the north-western resort of Victoria Falls on Sunday while addressing union members.

They were accused of holding a meeting without police permission.

Harare - The defence team of Zimbabwean politician Roy Bennett on Thursday asked the High Court judge in his terrorism case to recuse himself, saying they feared bias.

Bennett's lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa told reporters the defence team had asked Judge Chinembiri Bhunu during a hearing in his chambers "whether he could hand over to another judge".

Bhunu said he would give his answer Monday, she said.

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 - The head of Zimbabwe's national trade union federation has spent two nights in a prison cell following his arrest for allegedly holding an illegal meeting, lawyers representing him said Tuesday.

Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, and two of his colleagues, Michael Kandakutu and Percy Mcijo, were arrested in the north-western resort town of Victoria Falls on Sunday for "holding a meeting without notifying police," their lawyer, Kucaca Pulu, said.

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.

Maputo  - Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced late Thursday his party would end its boycott of the country's unity deal and gave President Robert Mugabe's party 30 days to fulfill its commitments under their power-sharing agreement.

Tsvangirai made the announcement in Maputo, Mozambique after a regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit.

SADC leaders had urged Mugabe and Tsvangirai to resume their cooperation in the interest of the country.

Maputo  - Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced late Thursday his party would end its boycott of the country's unity deal and gave President Robert Mugabe's party 30 days to fulfill its commitments under their power-sharing agreement.

Tsvangirai made the announcement in Maputo, Mozambique after a regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit.

SADC leaders had urged Mugabe and Tsvangirai to resume their cooperation in the interest of the country.

Maputo/Windhoek  - Southern African leaders were meeting in Mozambique Thursday in yet another attempt to try to break the deadlock in Zimbabwe's power-sharing government.

President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai have been summoned to Maputo by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional political bloc to discuss a way out of their three-week standoff.

SADC, which acts as the guarantor of Zimbabwe's uneasy unity pact, is to be represented at the talks by SADC chairman, Democratic Republic of Congo president Joseph Kabila, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, Zambian President Rupiah Banda and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Swazi King Mswati III.

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.

Windhoek  - Pressure was mounting Monday on the international watchdog set up to combat so-called "conflict diamonds", the Kimberley Process (KP) to suspend Zimbabwe from the global diamond trade over alleged human rights abuses and smuggling.

Members of the KP certification scheme were gathering for their annual plenary in the Namibian coastal resort of Swakopmund, which runs until Thursday.

The certification scheme (KPCS), which was implemented in 2003 and counts Zimbabwe among its member countries, requires diamond- producing countries to have controls in place certifying shipments of rough diamonds as "conflict-free."

Harare - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe on Saturday accused Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of being "dishonest", in what is seen as a sign of a deepening political crisis nine months after the two signed a power-sharing deal.

"We must no longer trust those who pretend to be in the inclusive government and have jumped in and out of it," Mugabe was quoted by the state-run Herald newspaper as saying.

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.