The coming days

The week ahead

An election in Italy and other news

• ZIMBABWE remains in limbo a week after its general elections and despite the success of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the parliamentary vote. The president, Robert Mugabe, looks determined to hold on to power by some means, although the opposition claims that Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, won outright in the first round of voting for president. Observers are expecting a run-off election to be called, between the two leaders, and for campaigning—and quite possibly repression—to restart this week.

For background see article

• THE latest assessment of how Iraq is faring will be delivered on Tuesday April 8th when America's ambassador to the country, Ryan Crocker, and its most senior soldier there, General David Petraeus, address the American Senate. In their last testimony they touted progress thanks to the troop surge of 2007. Things are less rosy now: certain Sunni areas have been pacified and the capital, Baghdad, is improving, but the Shia-led government and rival Shia militias are doing bloody battle. A deadline given by Iraq’s government for the militias to lay down their weapons falls, awkwardly, on the day of the two men’s testimony as they try to persuade senators that tactical and temporary gains are being turned into strategic and political progress.

For background see article

•TROUBLES of credit crunch and the parlous state of many of the world’s big economies will get serious attention towards the end of the week. On Friday April 11th the finance minister and central bankers of the G7 group of rich countries get together to ponder the current woes. A day later the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank hold their spring meeting to discuss what can be done for the world’s more rickety economies.

For background see article

•ITALIANS go to the polls on Sunday April 13th for a parliamentary election called after Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition collapsed in January. The right-wing party led by Silvio Berlusconi, a controversial former prime minister who is keen to reassume the role, has a narrow poll lead over the centre-left candidate, Walter Veltroni, a former mayor of Rome. The winner will have to deal with economy that is underperforming woefully, revitalise a country where politics has stagnated and attempt reform in a country where it repeated fails.