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In brief
Zimbabwe farmers get day in courtZimbabwe's embattled white farmers told the supreme court yesterday that President Robert Mugabe's "fast- track" land redistribution programme was violent and unconstitutional.
The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), representing 4,200 farmers, almost all white, said on the opening day of the trial that it was challenging Mr Mugabe in the supreme court because it had exhausted all other efforts at negotiating with the government. The CFU said it is not against land reform but it is opposed the illegal and often violent land seizures, which the police have done little to stop.
"The fast-track land resettlement is a blatant negation of the rule of law. The whole exercise should be stopped, according to the constitution, [and] in the interest of the country," its lawyer, Adrian de Bourbon, said.
"The fast-track programme is an attempt to bypass the courts . . . the government is not concerned with the legalities of the present land resettlement exercise. It is prepared to go about it in willful disregard of the law."
Mr De Bourbon told the court, consisting of one Asian, two white and two black judges, that 3,000 farms had been designated for compulsory acquisition without a transparent selection process.
Mr Mugabe was quick to dismiss the challenge.
"Whatever the courts might say on the matter, the land is ours and we will take it," he said on state television on Sunday. [Andrew Meldrum, Harare]
Shark kills Australian swimmer
One man was killed and another injured when a shark attacked a group of swimmers in Western Australia early yesterday.
Witnesses said the 16ft (5-metre) great white shark tore the leg off Ken Crew, 49, in waist-deep water at Cottesloe Beach, Perth. The local businessman was hauled from the water alive but died on the beach, despite attempts to revive him.
Another swimmer, Dick Avery, 52, who tried to rescue him, was in a stable condition after undergoing surgery for leg and foot injuries.
"There was a whole sea of blood," said Kim Gamble, a cafe owner. "From the balcony I could see this huge shark. When we saw the fin and the tail, people thought it was two sharks, it was so big."
More than 100 people were on the beach when the shark struck. "All of a sudden I heard all this yelling and screaming and looked down the beach [and] saw the blood in the water," said Di McCusker, who had just come out of the sea.
It was the third fatal shark attack in Australian waters in recent weeks. This one struck in a place which has not seen a shark-related death for 75 years. In late September two surfers were killed in shark attacks on the south coast.
Perth's beaches were closed yesterday as the Western Australia fisheries department monitored the shark's movements. The fisheries minister later issued a special permit to kill the great white, which is usually a protected species in Australia. [Patrick Barkham, Sydney]
Sandinista mayor for Managua
A leftwing Sandinista candidate was declared mayor of the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, yesterday.
Herty Lewites, who defeated a candidate from the Liberal Constitutionalist party, which has governed the capital and the country since the Sandinistas were defeated by the US-backed contra rebels, declared victory on Sunday night after the preliminary vote was announced.
President Arnoldo Aleman conceded his party's defeat but he vowed that it would continue to be Nicaragua's strongest political force.
He predicted that it would win at least 90 of the 154 mayoralties contested on Sunday.
With less than 4% of the votes in the capital counted early yesterday, the Sandinista party had won 45%, followed by the Liberal Constitutionalists on 27% and the Conservative party on 26%. Mr Aleman blamed his party's defeat on the Conservatives, saying they divided the vote. [AP, Managua]
Pompeii yields hotel fresco
A cycle of frescoes almost 2,000 years old has been unearthed near Pompeii during the delayed excavation of a building thought to have been an ancient luxury hotel.
They were painted shortly before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 which buried Pompeii, the city's art superintendent, Pier Giovanni Guzzo, said yesterday.
One of the best-preserved works portrays Calliope, the Greek muse of epic poetry, against a vivid red backdrop. Others depict Erato, the lyre-playing patron of lyric and erotic poetry, and Urania, the muse of astronomy.
The paintings adorn the walls of a building about 600 metres (2,000ft) outside the walls of Pompeii by the side of the modern road between Naples and Salerno.
The building, discovered in 1959, is believed to have been a 1,000 square-metre hotel with thermal baths.
There were no excavations at the site between 1959 and 1999, when an extension of the road was announced.
Archaeologists were sent in to survey the site. Their leader, Salvatore Nappo, said the luxurious building suggested that Pompeii was at the peak of its wealth when the whole area was buried in lava and volcanic ash.
The frescoes are undergoing restoration. [AP, Pompeii]
Fuel tanker crash kills at least 150
At least 150 people were killed when a petrol tanker lost control and crashed into a long queue of vehicles in south-west Nigeria at the weekend, newspapers reported yesterday.
Police in the Ile-Ife area, in south-west Osun state, could not immediately verify the death toll but confirmed that the accident happened on Sunday on the Ibadan-Ife road, about 150 miles north of the commercial capital, Lagos.
"The accident occurred on Sunday evening and it was reported to the police immediately. But I can't give the number of those who died now," a police officer said.
The newspapers said the tanker rammed into vehicles queueing at a police road block.
"The collision sparked a fire . . . all 115 vehicles in the vicinity with their occupants were burnt," the independent Guardian reported.
The papers said dozens more were on the critical list in a nearby government hospital.
Nigeria's poorly maintained roads have become death traps for motorists.
More than 40 people were killed in a road accident last August in the capital, Abuja. [Reuters, Lagos]