Zimbabwe's main opposition party on Saturday announced that it would contest the results of national elections -- even before they have taken place -- and declared that South African-mediated talks to ease the political and economic crisis had ended in failure.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said that it was only taking part in the March 29 elections with a "heavy heart."
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he disputed claims by southern African leaders that the elections would be free and fair.
"We hold the firm view that the 2008 elections ... cannot by any stretch of the imagination yield a legitimate outcome. Any statements to the contrary are extremely unfortunate," the opposition party said in a statement. "Tragically, the results of the 29 March 2008 elections will be contested."
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, leader since independence from Britain in 1980, is widely expected to win the elections despite his country's economic collapse.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
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UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.