World in brief: Opposition party rejects runoff
Zimbabwe’s opposition rejected a presidential runoff election despite a media report saying Wednesday that the long-delayed official tally delivered them a victory short of an outright win.
CNN quoted an unnamed senior official with Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party as saying results from the March 29 election gave President Robert Mugabe 43 percent and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai 47 percent. A candidate must receive 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a presidential runoff in Zimbabwe.
In Johannesburg, opposition spokesman George Sibotshiwe reiterated that the opposition would not take part in a runoff because it believed only fraudulent results would make a second round necessary.
In Harare, electoral commission officials said no results had been released, and that party officials would not see them until a verification process set to start today.
Guatemala City
Pending adoptions to be investigated
Guatemalan prosecutors said Wednesday that they will conduct a legal review of all of the country’s pending adoptions, after an initial probe turned up irregularities.
The attorney general’s office said that 2,286 case files will be re-examined. The vast majority of prospective adoptive parents are U.S. couples.
Meanwhile, four birth mothers who claim their children were stolen from them in 2006 and 2007 began a hunger strike in front of the offices of President Alvaro Colom to demand that their children be located.
Wellington, New Zealand
Big squid has eye to match body
Marine scientists studying the carcass of a rare colossal squid said Wednesday they had measured its eye at about 11 inches across – bigger than a dinner plate – making it the largest animal eye on Earth.
One of the squid’s two eyes, with a lens as big as an orange, was found intact as the scientists examined the creature while it was slowly defrosted at New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa. It has been preserved there since being caught in the Ross Sea off Antarctica’s northern coast last year.
“This is the only intact eye (of a colossal squid) that’s ever been found. It’s spectacular,” said Auckland University of Technology squid specialist Kat Bolstad, one of a team of international scientists brought in to examine the creature.
The squid is the biggest specimen ever caught of the rare and mysterious deep-water species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, or colossal squid. When caught, it measured 26 feet long and weighed about 1,000 pounds, but scientists believe the species may grow as long as 46 feet.