The Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) has no contractual relationship with any firm in its decision requiring businessmen to have electronic cash register (ECR) machines. TRA Director for Taxpayer Education, Protas Mmanda, said in Dar es Salaam that businessmen were free to buy ECRs machines from anywhere in the world provided they meet TRA specifications. He was reacting to allegations raised by one "disappointed businessman" that TRA was promoting ECRs being sold by a company he did not name.

Tanzania's new first line drug for treating malaria, Sulphadoxine Pyrimethamine (SP), has been embroiled in a high profile media scare over its potential side effects.

Five camps hosting Burundian refugees in Kibondo, western Tanzania, face a severe funding crisis, greatly hampering the provision of adequate assistance, particularly in education, water and sanitation, a relief organisation told PANA Monday.

Foreign and local journalists in Tanzania were barred from interviewing the visiting British Secretary of State for International Development, Ms Claire Short soon after arriving in Dar es Salaam. Short arrived at the Dar es Salaam International Airport (DIA) amid tight security and a total media blackout over her visit in which airport security officials said they were acting on orders from above. Even local members of the press working with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Reuters, AFP and The EastAfrican did not get any opportunity to interact with the visitor.

Ten-year-old Tanzanian children are involved in mining activities including the washing of rocks and the collecting and carrying of crushed rock that exposes them to serious health risks, according to new research.

Bernard Ndorainywe, 39, is a Burundian who has lived in the Nduta refugee camp in western Tanzania since 1996, and he wants to go home. However, as with many of the 100,000 refugees in the camps in Kibondo District, his home is in southern Burundi, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is not facilitating repatriation.

While seen by many as a burden on the country, the refugee crisis and the subsequent relief and development programmes in western Tanzania have, in fact, encouraged investment and opened up an inaccessible and forgotten part of the country, government officials and development workers in the region have said.

Passengers aboard the doomed train that crashed in Tanzania had to endure a 20 minute roller coaster ride to death. Early estimates of a death toll of more than 200 proved modest. Tanzania's worst rail disaster has claimed more than 300 lives, it was feared last night.

Tanzania's rare hardwood trees, including the Fagaropsis angolensis species found around Mount Kilimanjaro and the Brychylaena holschensii in the north-eastern Usambara mountain region are currently under threat from illegal logging, forest officials concede.

Clare Short, the UK international development secretary, is to fly to Tanzania next week to discuss the row over the country's controversial £28m military air traffic control system as allegations of shady deals and fraud begin to surface.

More than 30 people may have suffocated deep inside a tanzanite mine in northern Tanzania last Thursday after an oxygen pump failed, mining officials said. Alex Magayane, Arusha regional mines officer, said rescue workers had pulled one body from the gemstone mine in Mererani, 24 miles southeast of Arusha, and believed 31 others were still trapped inside.

Two independent radio producers, one based in Tanzania and the other in Burundi - respectively Studio Ijambo and Radio Kwizera - are to collaborate in order to use radio as "a tool of conflict prevention, and reconciliation". The collaboration would include programme-sharing, co-productions, exchanges of journalists and a correspondent network, a statement issued on Thursday said.

According to reports from the BBC and The Guardian, the latest World Bank investigation into the sale of a British air traffic control system to Tanzania is a "complete waste of money". The report confirms the fears of campaigners that, coming so soon after Tanzania received partial debt write-offs, the sale would squander funds better spent on poverty reduction.

While many Tanzanians marked World Environment Day on 5 June with localised tree-planting and cleanups, environmental activists have drawn attention to what they say is a weak legal and institutional framework for environmental management and protection in the country.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has agreed to give Zanzibar 385,000 US dollars to finance a good governance programme in the Isles which will also involve provision of expert advice on the campaign against corruption.

World Bank officials had repeatedly tried to bribe Tanzanian ministers during the construction of roads under the Integrated Roads Programme (IRP), a Dar es Salaam court has been told.

From January through June 1999, 45,000 Congolese refugees arrived in Lugufu camp in western Tanzania, surpassing the maximum camp capacity by 15,000 persons. During this 6-month period of rapid population influx, both the crude and under age 5 years mortality rates dramatically increased. A retrospective mortality survey in conjunction with a review of key programmatic indicators to identify risk factors for mortality was conducted in July and August 1999. This investigation revealed that all refugees, not solely the new arrivals, were at increased risk of dying. The population increase exceeded the camp's capacity to meet the basic needs of the refugees, resulting in a reduction in access to resources and services for the entire population.

Women in Zanzibar and Pemba islands of Tanzania will find a bit of relief as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) implements six water projects that will benefit 45,000 people.

Efforts to save girls from the outlawed practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Tanzania's Mara Region in late 2001 have failed.

Jean Marie Biju-Duval of France,lead counsel for genocide suspect Ferdinand Nahimana, has told judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)that an expert witness testifying for the prosecution in the so-called "Media Trial" is mistaken in calling his client's writings "ethnicized." The attorney made the claim when he cross-examined Alison Des Forges, Human Rights Watch Advisor and expert in Rwandan history.