Zimbabwean police on Monday charged four directors of the Daily News, an independent newspaper critical of Pres-ident Robert Mugabe's government, for publishing without a license, the paper's legal adviser said. The charges came after police arrested and charged Washington Sansole, one of the paper's directors in the second city of Bulawayo on Sunday. He was released on Monday following a high court order. However the four Harare-based directors were due to spend Monday night in police cells after being charged. The charges follow the publication on Saturday of the Daily News, six weeks after it was shut down by the authorities.
■ United Kingdom
No arms deal for election
Northern Irish assembly elections will go ahead without an agreement on arms decommissioning, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader David Trimble said Monday, the BBC reported. Talks on decommissioning reached a stalemate last week after the UUP rejected an IRA statement on disarmament, saying it lacked clarity. The IRA, the paramilitary arm of Sinn Fein, has refused to detail what weapons it is putting out of use. Crisis talks were held over the weekend between both sides and Trimble said that progress had been made but it was not enough to reach a firm resolution before elections scheduled for Nov. 26.
■ United States
The joy of spider sex
A study of spiders shows female wolf spiders will eat strange-looking males that try to mate with them, but spare and even hook up with familiar-looking males. The findings provide not just an interesting insight into spider behavior, but may help explain actions by "higher" animals, said arachnologist Eileen Hebets of Cornell University. "The female is using earlier experience that is going to affect her mate choice later," Hebets said. "It is reasonable to expect that is a common thing in other animals." The female can choose to mate, to run away or to eat her suitor. Sometimes she eats the hapless male after mating, Hebets said.
■ Germany
Phony cop on the beat
German police arrested an escaped convict after he posed as a traffic policeman in a stolen car, authorities said. "He had a blue roof light and stop signs in the car and said he'd made 130 euros [US$153] carrying out routine traffic controls," said a police spokeswoman in the eastern town of Bernau. A quick check revealed the 33-year-old bogus policeman was already wanted by a prison in Hanover where he had failed to return from home leave the week earlier. Police said he now faces the prospect of another sentence for usurpation of office.
■ Kenya
High school rampage
Kenyan students set fire to their school, ransacked kitchens and looted com-puters in a three-hour orgy of destruction after teachers banned video shows and disco activities, newspapers reported. Police using tear gas dispersed teenagers at the Kinyui Boys School in eastern Kenya after many of its 760 pupils went on the rampage on Saturday night in protest at the ban, which teachers said was designed to give them more time to study. "I wanted the Form Fours to have time to concentrate on exams," school principal Herman Kasini told The East African Standard, which carried pictures of a gutted dormitory and a collapsed corrugated iron roof.
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