Zimbabwe

New Zealand all-rounder Jacob Oram has been cleared to travel to the World Cup after sustaining an injury before the team's one-day match against Pakistan on Saturday.

Zimbabwe has licensed five independent power producers whose projects are aimed at helping a struggling power sector by doubling current electricity output to 4,450 megawatts, a government minister said on Friday.

China has offered Zimbabwe $3 billion for vast platinum reserves, a local private newspaper reported on Friday but said the deal was likely to be rejected by the government over its terms.

Sanctions on Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo are starting to bite, with cocoa exports drying up and banks lacking liquidity, but it is not clear how much his rival Alassane Ouattara will benefit from any economic meltdown.

The African Union said on Friday it would form a panel of heads of state to solve the leadership crisis in Ivory Coast which would come up with a legally binding settlement within one month.

Queues stretched for kilometres at immigration offices in South Africa on Friday as thousands of Zimbabweans tried to meet a year-end deadline to file papers for legalising their stay in the country.

Despite mounting international pressure, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe would run in the country’s polls likely to be scheduled for June next year. Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) unanimously endorsed him as a candidate for the elections on Saturday. The party cadres, along with their leader, also pledged for a ‘harmonious’ ballot in 2011.

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, has threatened to nationalize all British and American companies operating in his country unless Western sanctions are eliminated.

Burning tyres, rebel checkpoints, an angry mob and a placard that reads, Gbagbo thief... The West African state of Ivory Coast seems to be rapidly descending into a state of crisis. Acknowledged as the most expensive polls in Africa, the recent run-off was aimed at unifying the country which suffered bitter divisions and wrath of an armed uprising in 2002. But instead, they bared the discrepancy within the nation's population.

A day after both candidates claimed Presidency in Ivory Coast, African Union said it would dispatch former South African premier Thabo Mbeki for mediations. Local media has reported of at least a dozen people killed in post-election violence in the former capital of Abijdan.

South African president Jacob Zuma set off to Harare on Friday expecting to even out the disputes of Zimbabwe's power-sharing government which is almost on the verge of collapse. The Zimbabwe standoff worsened as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai filed a lawsuit against ruling president Robert Mugabe accusing him of violating the global political agreement (GPA) signed between them.