Mugabe hosts $250,000 birthday party

Per Bloomberg, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe threw a party Saturday to celebrate his 85th birthday with 3,000 of his closest friends that cost a reported $250,000, including a cake said to weigh 187 pounds (85kg).

Mugabe recently asked Zimbabwe's neighboring countries for more than $2 million in aid. His bash comes on the heels of a recent cholera epidemic that has taken the lives of nearly 4,000 Zimbabweans, and more than half of the population needs emergency food aid to prevent starvation.'

While The New York Times, called it "a modest affair" by Mugabe's standards, there was nothing modest about the response from Twiterers.

@paulakahumbu (Nairobi): Mugabe has lavish birthday while citizens starve and die of cholera - hope he chokes on cake http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7916312.stm

@mensah (Ghana): @ajmunn He needs to be axed out of power. Mugabe is the cause of Zimbabwe's woes. 

@StephanVR  (Potchefstroom, South Africa): Amid the hunger, a feast for Mugabe http://post.ly/3il

@AlisonRMauldin (Los Angeles): Mugabe should be ashamed

http://tinyurl.com/cdahex

@rewby (London): Really can't believe Mugabe is having week long birthday celebrations while his ppl starve and die of cholera. It's truly unfarhomable [sic].

Read more about the story from The Australian and The Christian Science Monitor.