Harare - Incarcerated top Zimbabwean human rights activist Jestina Mukuko charged Tuesday that she had been subject to abuse while in detention after her early December arrest.

In papers filed to the High Court demanding an end to criminal proceedings against her on charges of plotting to topple President Robert Mugabe's government, Mukoko said she had been blindfolded during her detention, had been beaten, and had not received medication for more than 10 days.

Mukoko was seized early on the morning of December 3 from her home in Norton, some 40 kilometres south-west of the capital Harare. In the papers she filed with the court, she demanded that the people who abducted her should be prosecuted.

Harare  - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe vowed to fend off his "political death" and urged his party to be ready for new polls as he blamed Britain for the economic woes facing the country.

Closing his ZANU-PF party's 10th annual conference in Bindura, about 80 kilometres north of Harare late Saturday, Mugabe brushed off international pressure to resign as Zimbabwe crumbles under its worst humanitarian and economic crisis.

Harare - Zimbabwe's central bank Friday issued a 10-billion- dollar banknote, as inflation drove the value of the currency to new depths, according to state radio.

A bulletin said the 10-billion-dollar note, issued simultaneously with 1-billion and 5-billion-Zimbabwe-dollar notes, "would go a long way in improving workers' access to cash."

Only a week ago new notes of up to 500 million Zimbabwe dollars in value were issued in a bid by the Reserve Bank to ease mammoth queues at banks around the country caused by acute cash shortages.

Harare - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government said it would not arrest opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for travelling on an expired travel document, according to state media Thursday.

Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for Democratic Change which won national elections in March, is in Botswana with only an expired emergency travel document (ETD) issued to him last month when he left the country, and he has said he cannot return because he does not have a valid travel document.

Harare/Johannesburg - Political tensions in Zimbabwe heightened Tuesday as President Robert Mugabe's government claimed that a "terrorist assassination attempt" had been made on a notorious top officer of the security forces.

The state-controlled daily Herald newspaper said Air Marshal Perence Shiri, commander of the Zimbabwe Air Force, was ambushed by unidentified gunmen as he was driving to his farm in the Bindura district about 80 kilometres north of Harare on Saturday night. It said he suffered a gunshot wound in the palm of his hand.

Harare, Dec. 13 : Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has accused Britain of waging "biological warfare" against his people through a cholera outbreak that has killed at least 800 people so far.

Health officials in South Africa have said that Zimbabwe''s cholera epidemic is now of a "massive magnitude".

Mugabe has long sought to portray the suffering of his country''s people as the result of a dispute between London and his own government, blaming the former colonial power for a range of ills. But the cholera claim is further and more bizarre than his Zanu-PF party has ever gone before.