Harare

Zimbabwe’s registry office has stopped issuing identification cards, passports and other crucial documents to citizens as an acute shortage of foreign currency appears to be steadily crippling vital state departments and enterprises. Senior officials at the registrar general’s office told ZimOnline that the office had now suspended the issuing of identity cards and passports.

Zimbabwe’s military has said the country’s cellphone operators are threatening national security by using independent connections to the outside world, official media reported on Tuesday. ”The mobile-service providers have their own international gateway system and … this is dangerous to the state,” Colonel Livingstone Chineka was quoted as saying.

Church leaders in Zimbabwe attempted on Monday to head off a rift over a church report on the nation’s political and economic turmoil after priests of the Jesuit order alleged the report, issued last month, was censored by government agents. The Roman Catholic Bishops Conference said in a statement on Monday there were misunderstandings over the report.

A Chinese company has offered -billion for a 60% stake in Zimbabwe’s struggling state-owned steel firm, according to a report in the government-run Herald newspaper on Monday. The move would be Beijing’s biggest investment yet in the crisis-hit Southern African country.

A leading Zimbabwean rights group on Thursday slammed President Robert Mugabe’s government for failing to ratify a United Nations convention against torture. ”We don’t understand why Zimbabwe is not yet a party to the UN Convention Against Torture,” deputy director for the Southern African Human Rights Trust said.

President Robert Mugabe this week sought to bolster ties with fiery but controversial Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a move analysts said showed the veteran leader was frantically seeking political and economic allies. Mugabe has fallen out with Western nations after accusations that his government is violating human rights and rigging elections.

Iran and Zimbabwe ”think alike” and ”should fight against Western superpowers and their evil systems”, President Robert Mugabe was quoted as saying on Tuesday. The Zimbabwean leader said his country and Iran had to come together and work out ”mechanisms for defending ourselves”, according to Zimbabwe’s state-controlled Herald newspaper.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Sunday left on a four-day state visit to Iran to beef up trade and political ties with a fellow pariah nation in Western eyes, state radio reported. ”The visit will see the two countries strengthening ties on energy, telecommunications, transport and trade,” it said, without elaborating.

Zimbabwe has the highest number of orphans in the world in relation to its population, mainly due to the HIV/Aids pandemic blighting the economically ravaged country, a United Nations official said on Sunday. ”Zimbabwe has the highest number of orphans per capita in the world,” James Elder, a spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund told the media.

The Zimbabwean government on Thursday asked more than 800 white farmers to claim compensation for properties seized under the state’s land redistribution programme, but the main farmers’ support group described the proposed compensation as ”daylight robbery” in the country’s hyperinflationary economy.

Zimbabwe on Thursday invited more than 1 000 white farmers to collect compensation for property seized during a controversial land-reform programme launched by President Robert Mugabe’s government. Zimbabwe launched its controversial and often violent land reforms seven years ago, seizing at least 4 000 properties formerly run by white farmers.

War veterans in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province have asked President Robert Mugabe to rein in Emmerson Mnangagwa, whom they accused of sowing divisions in the party as a vicious power struggle to succeed Mugabe intensifies. Mnangagwa heads a faction of Zanu-PF that is embroiled in a mortal fight with a rival faction.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe will next year draft hundreds of graduates of the government’s controversial youth militia programme into the civil service, but to solely campaign for his ruling Zanu-PF party and bolster its support among young Zimbabweans, sources told ZimOnline.

The trial of former Zimbabwean Test cricketer Mark Vermeulen, charged with arson attacks on the Zimbabwe Cricket Association’s boardroom and training academy, was adjourned until next month by a court in Harare on Tuesday. Magistrate Omega Mugumbate agreed to a defence application for the adjournment in order to allow leading lawyer Eric Matinenga to free up his schedule.

Zimbabwe’s troubled national carrier has managed to settle a ,8-million debt owed to a navigation agency and will resume flights to London later this week, reports said on Monday. Air Zimbabwe abruptly halted flights to London last week over fears its plane would be impounded over the unpaid debt.

Cash-strapped national carrier Air Zimbabwe has suspended its flights to London fearing the seizure of its planes by a European navigation agency over a ,8- million debt. Air Zimbabwe board chairperson Mike Bimha was quoted by the Herald as saying the Agency for the Safety of Air Navigation recently won a court order to impound the national carrier’s planes to recover its debt.

A Zimbabwe court has fined two Botswana reporters for breaching a law barring journalists from working in the country without government approval. Critics say President Robert Mugabe’s government is using tough media laws to terrorise the media and curb criticism in the face of a severe economic crisis.

The Zimbabwean government is to rewrite a controversial Bill that would allow the state to eavesdrop on private phone conversations and monitor faxes and e-mails, officials said on Monday. The Interception of Communications Bill has come under a barrage of criticism since it was published in May.

Two of Zimbabwe’s private cellphone companies have mounted a court challenge to new state regulations forcing them to share international traffic revenue with a state-owned company. Independent cellphone companies were given until November 1 to comply with a government order forcing them to route their traffic through a single international gateway.

A witness in the trial of a white Zimbabwean security expert, Michael Hitschmann, has claimed the man planned to kill four prominent businessmen as a bad-taste birthday present for President Robert Mugabe, it was reported on Friday. The four were ruling-party businessmen and officials based in the cities of Mutare and Bulawayo.

Controversial former Zimbabwe Test player Mark Vermeulen was formally charged on Thursday with carrying out an arson attack on the offices and training academy of the national cricket board. The 27-year-old Vermeulen, who had been detained at Harare’s main police station, was expected to appear before a magistrate’s court in the capital on Friday, his lawyer David Dumbura told the media.

Women in central Zimbabwe are selling sex to truck drivers for fuel, reports said on Thursday. They say it is more profitable than being paid in cash, police spokesperson Costa Taduwa told the Daily Mirror, which is a private but mainly pro-government newspaper. It said the young women were soliciting truck drivers on the busy highway between Harare and Beitbridge.

Zimbabwean trade union leaders have asked Parliament to stop a bid by President Robert Mugabe’s nephew to demand the state fire labour officials opposed to the government. Leo Mugabe has tabled a motion in Parliament for the removal of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions leaders ”for unethical conduct”.

Controversial former Zimbabwe Test player Mark Vermeulen was being questioned by police on Thursday over a suspected arson attack on the national cricket training academy in Harare. The pavilion and computer equipment, as well as kit, were destroyed by the blaze on Tuesday night at the training centre.

Police in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, on Wednesday used batons to break up a demonstration by scores of pro-democracy activists, arresting three protesters, a spokesperson for the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) claimed. At least 250 members of the NCA were rounded up by police in central Harare while demonstrating for a new Constitution.

The ageing president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has hit out against fierce jockeying for his position, accusing would-be presidential candidates of waiting impatiently ”like witches” to see him go, it was reported on Wednesday. In candid comments about the fighting in the corridors of power, Mugabe (82) said there were just three or four candidates wanting to succeed him.