Police in Zimbabwe have arrested 16,290 illegal miners – mostly gold panners – in a countrywide blitz that began just over a month ago, the official media reported today.

Police in Zimbabwe say they have razed more than 20,000 shacks and other structures in what President Robert Mugabe calls an urban cleanup campaign – but what critics at home and abroad have decried as an assault on the poor.

A white farmer will be charged with murdering one of a group of black Zimbabweans that took over part of his land, police said today.