Police hold Swazi poll protesters

Pro-democracy activists held protests earlier this month

Police in Swaziland have detained a number of pro-democracy activists planning a border blockade ahead of parliamentary elections in the kingdom.

Several union leaders were bundled into police vans at the main border crossing with South Africa, organizers of the planned blockade said.

Political parties are banned in Swaziland, one of the world’s last absolute monarchies.

There have been recent protests calling for change and multi-party democracy.

A government spokesman has said the planned blockade was unnecessary.

But the secretary-general of the Swaziland Federation of Labor, Vincent Ncongwane, said protesters wanted to demonstrate that Friday’s elections would not be inclusive.

“We still have in Swaziland this myth that you can have a democracy where there isn’t the participation of other political parties,” he told.

Landlocked Swaziland is almost entirely surrounded by South Africa.

Zimbabwe rivals agree unity deal

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe have reached a deal to share power.

After mediating four days of talks in Harare, South African President Thabo Mbeki said the agreement would be signed and made public on Monday.

Mr Tsvangirai has confirmed the deal, but Mr Mugabe has yet to comment.

The government and the opposition MDC had already agreed that Mr Tsvangirai would be prime minister with Mr Mugabe staying on as president.

Negotiations have been on-off since the end of July, but have stalled over the allocation of executive power between Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai, bitter rivals for a decade.

‘Parallel governments’

Mr Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was first to announce the breakthrough, telling reporters simply: “We’ve got a deal.”

Later, Mr Mbeki told a news conference the two sides had agreed unanimously to form an inclusive government.

He said: “I am absolutely certain that the leadership of Zimbabwe is committed to implementing these agreements.”

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told : “Both political parties are committed, it’s our wish that the deal will be successful.”

Zimbabwe’s envoy to the UN, Boniface Chidyausiku told that the deal was a “triumph for African diplomacy”.

The UN special representative on Zimbabwe, Haile Menkerios, said the announcement marked a way forward that all sides could live with.

Britain’s Foreign Office said it was following the situation closely, adding that “our concern is the welfare of the Zimbabwean people”.

The discussions are thought to have been deadlocked over how many ministries each party should have in a unity government, and how much power Mr Mugabe should retain.

Mr Tsvangirai has consistently demanded that he should become executive prime minister, thereby taking over some of the powers that Mr Mugabe has exercised for more than 28 years.

Mr Tsvangirai may now chair a new council of ministers and control the day-to-day running of the country, but Mr Mugabe will head the cabinet, our correspondent says.

However, how two – in effect – parallel governments will work is unclear, he adds.

Aid hopes

The agreement opens the way for international donors to help to revive Zimbabwe’s economy.

It is now the fastest shrinking in the world with inflation galloping to more than 11m%.

Mr Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, won a controversial June presidential run-off election unopposed after Mr Tsvangirai withdrew, claiming the MDC was the target of state-sponsored violence.

In the first presidential election in March, Mr Tsvangirai gained more votes than Mr Mugabe, but official results say he did not pass the 50% threshold for outright victory.

Earlier on Thursday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said any power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe would be judged by how much it reflected legitimate election results.

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Website maps surnames worldwide

There are more Beckhams in the United States than Britain

A website which maps global surnames has been launched to help people find the origins of their name and how far it may have spread.

The Public Profiler site plots eight million last names using data from electoral rolls and phone directories.

The site covers 300 million people in 26 countries, showing the origins of names and where families have moved to.

David Beckham, for example, has an English name, but there are more Beckhams in the US than Britain.

But the region of the world with the highest concentration of people called Beckham was even further from the footballer’s east London origins – in the New Zealand province of Northland.

The site – http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames – also reveals which of the five million forenames are most closely associated with different surnames and lists the top regions and cities for each surname.

A name is now not just a statement of who you are but where you are Professor Paul Longley

It was developed by a team of geographers from University College London.

Professor Paul Longley, one of the researchers, said: “The information is not just historical but geographical.

“We can link names to places – a name is now not just a statement of who you are but where you are.”

Most surnames originated in specific places in the world and remain most frequent in those areas, but have often spread to other countries because of migration, the research showed.

Searches for Britain’s three multi-gold medallists at the recent Olympics and the leaders of the three main political parties revealed some mixed results.

• Swimmer Rebecca Adlington’s surname is most prevalent in New Zealand

• Cyclist Chris Hoy’s surname is Irish but more common in Denmark

• Cyclist Bradley Wiggins’s surname is most popular in the US

• Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s surname tops the list in Australia

• Conservative leader David Cameron’s surname is most prevalent in New Zealand

• Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s surname is still most common in Britain

Prof Longley said that the site was currently struggling to cope with demand.

“We are being deluged with requests and we ask people to be patient. There is obviously a lot of interest in family names and family history globally,” he said.