Zimbabwe Arrests Dozens in Price Wars

Police in Zimbabwe have arrested 1,328 businesspeople, including 33 top executives, for violating official price controls installed to curb uncontrollable currency devaluation. The new regulations demand that many goods' prices be cut in half in response to inflation that has now risen to more than 3,700%.

A single banana now costs more than a four-bedroom house did in 2000, one Zimbabwean tells the BBC. The price controls are forcing many firms to operate at a loss and shut down, but police are not backing down. "We will sustain this operation at all costs to make sure at the end of it there is sanity in the business sector," said a government spokesman. (More Zimbabwe stories.)