Mozambique

President Armando Guebuza pledged to step up the fight against the crippling levels of poverty in war-ravaged Mozambique on Friday as he opened the long-time ruling Frelimo party’s national congress. Frelimo has begun to make inroads into levels of poverty in the past few years.

Portugal on Tuesday handed over its controlling stake in one of Africa’s largest dams to former colony Mozambique after tortuous negotiations spanning more than three decades. The pact, signed by Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, gives Mozambique control of an 85% stake of the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi river.

The United Nations has pledged to provide about -million to fight poverty in Mozambique, which is slowly emerging from a brutal 16-year civil war. ”The UN will mobilise nearly -million for the government’s poverty reduction plan to help officials fight poverty in the next three years,” UN chief representative in Mozambique, resident Ndolamb Ngokwey, said late on Monday.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of independence hero Samora Machel’s death in a mystery plane crash, hailing him as an ”African hero”. Guebuza and South African President Thabo Mbeki will later on Thursday jointly pay homage to Machel at the site of the plane crash in South Africa.

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is not just economics, but a matter of life or death, said Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations secretary general. The MDGs, approved by almost every government in the world at the UN’s Millennium Summit in 2000, include such targets as halving extreme poverty, reversing the spread of HIV/Aids and reducing child mortality.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Friday said there had been no word from South African authorities on a fresh probe into the mysterious death of Mozambique’s first president, Samora Machel, during the apartheid era. ”Sadly enough, we haven’t had an answer as yet,” Guebuza said.

Four people died in the powerful earthquake on Thursday that forced thousands of panicked residents from their homes, Mozambique’s government and state radio reported on Friday. The United States Geological Survey said the quake struck on Thursday at 12.19am local time with a magnitude of 7,5.

A powerful earthquake struck Mozambique early on Thursday morning, shaking buildings and forcing people from hundreds of kilometres around to dash into the streets for safety. There were no immediate reports of injury. The United States Geological Survey said the magnitude 7,5 quake had an epicentre 224km southwest of Mozambique’s main port of Beira.

Muslims throughout Mozambique are meeting this week to discuss how to respond to the publishing by local newspaper Savana of the controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which has stirred violent protest around the world. The independent weekly on Friday reprinted eight of the 12 cartoons.

Floods in central Mozambique have killed at least 15 people in two central provinces and left thousands homeless after heavy rains in the Southern African country since Christmas, officials said on Wednesday. The heavy rains in the former Portuguese colony follow a lengthy drought that has left nearly one million people in need of food aid, mostly in the south of the country.

Storms and flooding have killed at least 13 people since torrential rains started in the central Mozambique province of Sofala last week, state-run radio reported on Tuesday. Eight of the victims were struck by lightning and five drowned in floods unleashed by the storms, Radio Mozambique reported.

A man accused of masterminding the killing of Mozambique’s leading investigative journalist went on trial on Thursday after twice escaping from jail. Anibal Dos Santos Junior, known here as Anibazinho, was convicted in 2003 of murdering Carlos Cardoso and sentenced to 28 years in prison.

In the sandy compound of his extended family’s home, six-year-old Manuel Rafael is playing with his cousins. He doesn’t know he is HIV-positive, and doesn’t understand his grandmother’s explanation in Portuguese about how he could have died but for the anti-retroviral treatment he began when he was just a year old.

Mozambique’s livestock authorities announced a ban on Saturday on poultry imports from several European countries that have reported cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. A ban already in place on imports from Asia will be extended to cover several countries in Europe.

African health ministers meeting in Mozambique on Wednesday described a planned 30% increase in spending on their continent by the UN’s World Health Organisation as important, but not enough, given the massive problems to be faced.

A new, independent anti-corruption office will be created to stamp out graft in the public sector, Mozambique’s attorney general said on Saturday. Francisco Madeira told state radio that the National Council for the Fight against Corruption will be autonomous, with no interference from the government.

The success of the first mass immunisation campaign against cholera in Mozambique’s port city of Beira has prompted calls for greater access to an oral vaccine. Needle-administered cholera vaccines have generally provided about 50% protection for just two months, but the oral vaccine has proven far more effective.

At 9am on a Monday morning, the used clothing vendors at Chiquelene Market in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, are still unpacking their wares. The sale of clothing donated to charities in Europe and North America has supported Angelina Arnaldo and her seven children for 17 years. On a good day, she takes home around $10. "It’s easier than selling food because it doesn’t go off," she explained.