PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe and opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed to a power-sharing arrangement on Monday during intensive meetings at the Rainbow Towers Hotel ahead of marathon inter-party talks that started in Pretoria yesterday.

The United States Embassy in Harare said the Bush administration has strengthened sanctions against individuals blamed for the brutal pre-election violence. President Bush signed a new Executive Order on Friday.

Talks between Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party and the 2 MDC formations entered a second day on Friday at a secret location in South Africa, with local media reports saying that a deal could be reached before the 2 week deadline spelled out in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

The Mozambican police has been "gangsterised", according to Domingos Maita, who was head of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) in Maputo in the 1990s.

DIVISIONS within Zanu PF, which appeared to have disappeared following the shock March 29 election setback, have returned to haunt the party after Vice-President Joseph Msika recently labelled some party functionaries in Matabeleland as sell-outs.

South Africa, the only African state to date to have signed a "strategic partnership agreement" with the European Union, is holding a summit with the EU today in Bordeaux, France.

AFRICAN National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma yesterday showed who is in charge.

A FORMER Vodacom executive is facing charges of perjury after allegedly lying to the Competition Commission.

In a narrow and still winter-brown valley, little more than a crevice between rocky mountains, Gogo Ndlovu looks after her five young orphaned grandchildren.

GROWTH is likely to slow significantly this year and next as weaker private sector investment, a global economic slowdown and falling consumer spending weigh on SA's economy, says the Bureau for Economic Research (BER).

TRANSPORT and Communications deputy minister Hubert Nyanhongo has been accused of defying two High Court orders compelling him to vacate a farm in Burma Valley, Manicaland, he seized from a white-commercial farmer, Johan Vorster.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated seventeen entities, including several Zimbabwean parastatals, and one individual whose support for Robert Mugabe's regime contributes to the undermining of democratic processes and institutions in Zimbabwe.

ZANU PF and the two formations of the MDC this week expressed their commitment to alleviate the humanitarian crisis faced by the country with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which sets the agenda for inter-party talks.

HAVEN'T we been here before? "Talks about talks"; the search for a "settlement";

CASH shortages worsened further this week amid speculation that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was working on plans to introduce yet another higher denomination agro-bearers' cheque.

TALKS to find a settlement to Zimbabwe's decade-long crisis started in Pretoria this week with Zanu PF and the MDC still deeply divided over what the process should produce.

Angolan Government and main opposition Unita party, Thursday in Luanda, reiterated the need for continued combined efforts towards the pacification of the country, by settling, through dialogue, situations that can disturb the process of national reconciliation.

South Africa's Trade Union Federation, COSATU has vowed to make Robert Mugabe's life 'difficult' if he does not concede power.

Concern is growing as to why the negotiators continue to talk when the original conditions to begin talks have been ignored.

Japan has pledged 88,400 US dollars to finance the construction of a health post at Ambrosio, in Boane district, about 30 kilometres west of Maputo.

Senior technical staff from the eight southern African counties which share the Zambezi basin held a working meeting in Maputo on Friday to discuss the next steps in implementing the strategy to develop and manage the water resources of the basin.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza said on Thursday that the government will from now on impose stricter checks on the selection of beneficiaries for the Local Initiatives Development Fund.

On 21 July 2008 the Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA) imposed a nine-month suspension on Harvest FM for what it called "failure to cooperate with the authority."

United States President George W. Bush introduced new sanctions Friday July 25 intended to put further pressure on Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and other Zanu-PF members:

RATINGS agency Standard & Poor's has identified five South African companies that could emerge as challengers to global blue-chip companies, down from seven firms last year when the country was enjoying strong, consumer-led economic growth.