Mugabe gets added powers

Harare Zimbabwe’s parliament voted Tuesday to give President Robert Mugabe new constitutional powers to seize farmland and to restrict travel by government opponents in a country whose government is already regarded as among the most repressive in Africa.

Mugabe’s ruling party, flush with new members from a March legislative election denounced as rigged by many international observers, won 103 votes for the constitutional changes, enough for the two-thirds majority needed in the body of 150 members. News reports from Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, said ruling party lawmakers began singing and dancing over the victory.

But opposition leaders predicted that Mugabe, who is expected to swiftly sign the changes into law, would soon revoke their passports.

First group of rebels released in Indonesia

Bandung, Indonesia More than 70 rebels from Indonesia’s tsunami-ravaged Aceh province were freed from prison Wednesday, the first in a wave of releases in a peace deal ending a decades-long separatist war.

More than 1,300 other prisoners, both those held in Aceh and at prisons elswhere in Indonesia, were also scheduled to be released Wednesday.

China cracks down on its coal mines

Beijing China is suspending production at 7,000 coal mines – nearly one-third of the nationwide total – in a safety crackdown on the accident-plagued industry, a government newspaper reported.

The mines, most of them small and poorly equipped, will be required to improve safety measures and will not be allowed to reopen if they fail to meet national standards, the China Daily said.

Today’s announcement came two days after 123 miners missing in a flooded coal mine in southern China were declared dead in a highly publicized disaster. Eleven mine officials blamed for the accident have been detained and two local mayors dismissed.

So far, 1,324 mines have closed, and the rest must suspend production by the end of the year, the China Daily said. It said China’s energy supplies should not be affected, because the mines account for a small fraction of coal output.

Woman, 115, dies; believed world’s oldest

Hoogeveen, Netherlands Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, believed to be the world’s oldest person, died Tuesday at a home for the elderly in Hoogeveen, Netherlands. She was 115.

Louis Epstein of the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, which verifies age claims for Guinness World Records, confirmed van Andel-Schipper’s death for the Los Angeles Times and said she had held the “world’s oldest” title for 15 months.

Johan Beijering, director of the Westerkim home for the elderly, said van Andel-Schipper died peacefully in her sleep.

Her advice on how to live a long life was to eat pickled herring, drink orange juice and “keep breathing.”

U.N. agencies to repay $40 million to Iraq

United Nations The nine U.N. agencies involved in the oil-for-food program have agreed to pay Iraq about $40 million in oil proceeds they received in 2003 to finish their work but never spent, United Nations officials said Tuesday.

A U.N.-backed probe of the scandal-tainted operation, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has been investigating the nine agencies and their handling of the money. The cash, which came from Iraqi oil revenue, was a flat fee and there had been no expectation that it would be returned.

Nonetheless, Iraqi officials and Volcker’s team had raised questions about the message that would be sent by keeping it. The money was meant to help the agencies wrap up their work under oil-for-food, the 1996-2003 humanitarian operation that helped Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.