Word: commonwealth
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...disputed election that saw President Robert Mugabe re-elected, Zimbabweans largely ignored opposition calls for a three-day general strike. Mugabe was pressured by South Africa and Nigeria to take defeated opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai into a government of national unity as his country was suspended from the Commonwealth for a year. As violence against white farmers and opposition supporters continued, Tsvangirai was taken to court to be charged with plotting Mugabe's assassination...
...opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai, the third MDC official to be arraigned on the treason charge, was released on bail and had to surrender his passport. "It was expected," he told TIME. "So much for reconciliation." Though international reaction to Mugabe's victory was swift - the Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe from the organization's councils for a year - the chances of change in the country look increasingly slim...
...nation Commonwealth's punitive suspension of Zimbabwe is unlikely to force any dramatic changes. Mugabe's Minister of State for Information, Jonathan Moyo, described it as "meaningless." For Mugabe, the Common-wealth move - recommended by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Australia's John Howard - conveniently averted the possibility of further sanctions from Commonwealth members such as Britain, Canada and Australia. The European Union and the United States have drawn up "smart" sanctions, which would include a travel ban on Mugabe and senior members of his ZANU-PF party and a freeze on their assets abroad...
...Library budgets will be slashed; hundreds of journal subscriptions have already been dropped and fewer books purchased. Departmental budgets will also suffer; next year, some of the smaller departments may be combined or discontinued altogether. Especially damaging are plans to reduce resources allocated to the UMass-Amherst honors program, Commonwealth College, which since its 1997 inception has been a crown jewel of the Massachusetts university system...
...team downsizing comes in response to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ decision to cut funds to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst by $17.1 million this year—part of a $28.5 million budget cut burden thrust upon UMass’ five campuses during the state’s current economic crisis...