MISA-Mozambique, a regional chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, has strongly protested the brutal beating of a community radio journalist by members of the country's main opposition party, Renamo, in the northern port of Nacala. The incident occurred on 16 September 2009, the fourth day of the current election campaign.

In the Niassa province of northwest Mozambique, one doctor has been working with local communities to overcome the delays responsible for three-quarters of maternal deaths each year. Dr Peg Cumberland, a slim, energetic English woman, has worked in Mozambique for over 13 years. She came to the Niassa region in 2004 when she heard that the community was asking for assistance.

Young men in cars covered in Frelimo posters vandalised the MDM headquarters in Bairro 2, Chókwé, Gaza early Sunday morning. In Changara, Tete, young men in Frelimo t-shirts burned the Renamo headquarters and three houses. It was a violent start to the official election campaign, which began on Sunday 13 September.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Maputo, capital of Mozambique, and the country's second city, Beira this week, to protest the government's closure of day care hospitals for HIV-positive patients. In Maputo, activists handed Health Minister Paulo Ivo Garrido a memorandum slamming the decision, which they said was a setback in the national response to the epidemic. An estimated 16 percent of Mozambique's 21 million people are living with the virus.

Less than 7 percent of HIV-positive children in Mozambique are receiving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, according to a new study. A 2009 HIV/AIDS Demographic Impact Study by the National Statistics Institute (with the Portuguese acronym INE), found that about 150,000 children between 0 and 14 were living with the virus, but only 10,477 were on medication.

The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, has passed the second and final reading of a bill on domestic violence against women, but with a clause tacked onto the end to placate the howls of rage from some male quarters that the bill was "unconstitutional" because it "discriminated against men". Some of the press has waged a relentless campaign against the bill. The private TV channel, STV, and the daily paper "O Pais", owned by the same company, have been particularly insistent that the bill violates the constitutional clause on equality between the sexes, and should be "more inclusive".

Barely a week after World Bank gave Mozambique $31 million to help in increasing availability of reliable communication, the country is also to have $176 million loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).The loan is expected to help uplift the southern African country's economy.

Nearly 20 percent of Mozambique's civil servants are HIV positive, but given that several government ministries lack reliable data, this number could even be higher, a study has warned. According to a Demographic Impact Study by the government, around 19.2 percent of 167,420 public employees were found to be HIV positive, which is higher than the national prevalence rate of 16 percent.

It is prayer time at the Nur madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado Province, on the northern coast of Mozambique. At this school, education does not stop at religious studies; on Saturdays, the malimo (teacher), Mitilage Rashid, talks to the 120 students about HIV and AIDS. In 2008 Rashid attended a course on HIV run by the Islamic Council of Mozambique, in partnership with other organizations, where he and 30 other teachers learned about the epidemic and how to conduct education campaigns at their schools.

Mozambique has one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates, with more than ten percent of babies not reaching the age of one, according to the United Nations Children Fund’s 2009 State of the World’s Children Report. The main cause of child death in Mozambique is malaria, closely followed by HIV/AIDS, the report states.

At 18-years old, Maria Ivone Soares decided politics was her calling and the decision has paid off well. Soares is now one of Mozambique’s most respected, outspoken politicians. Growing up in Maputo, Soares wanted be part of the democratic revolution, so she joined Renamo, which waged a 16-year old civil war with the ruling Frelimo to fight off socialism and is now Mozambique’s leading opposition party.

On 15 April 2009, MISA-Mozambique denounced the intimidation of two radio journalists in the northern province of Niassa, one of whom was illegally detained by the police. Felismino Jamissone is a producer for a community radio station in the Niassa district of Mecanhelas. He produces a programme on human rights, which has frequently interviewed Mecanhelas citizens who are severely critical of the police.

A Mozambican and South African consortium, Petroline Holdings, plans to start building a $620-million oil pipeline linking Johannesburg to the port of Maputo before the end of this year. Mateus Kathupa, CEO of state-run Mozambican company PETROMOC, which holds a 40% stake in the consortium, said on Thursday the construction of the petrol and diesel pipeline would take six months.

A group of Mozambique's nineteen development partners on Wednesday approved a $816 million aid package to support the government's 2009 state budget and other development projects for the next five years. The group, known as the Programme Aid Partners (PAP), who provide support to the national budget, are the largest grouping of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa.

With an annual growth of 7%, substantial foreign investment, and rapid expansion of education, Mozambique is often billed by donors as a development success. But in a new book, Do Bicycles Equal Development in Mozambique?, Joseph Hanlon and Teresa Smart argue that poverty is increasing and that a development model based on neo-liberalism and the Millennium Development Goals has failed.

The Chinese government has pledged a further 2.5 million US dollars to finance work to remove soil from the site where the new Mozambican national stadium is being built. The schedule remains unchanged, that is, that the stadium will be complete before the football World Cup to be held in South Africa, in 2010.

Behind the rather inane-sounding title lies an in-depth and complex investigation of the effects of Mozambique’s heavily aid-supported economic trajectory. Indeed, the image of bicycles and their presence in the country is used as a running theme throughout the book to illustrate the innate problems with the methods currently used to measure economic development and poverty alleviation, and to question their effectiveness. In the authors’ well-researched assessment, it is high time for a new approach.

India and Mozambique on Thursday signed two agreements for promotion of trade and Investment and strengthening the cooperation in economic, cultural, scientific and technical areas. The agreements were signed by Union Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma and Mozambique Foreign Minister Oldemiro Baloi at Hyderabad House.

Police have arrested two parliamentary deputies from Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, for acts of violence during the current municipal election campaign in the northern port of Nacala. According to a report in Wednesday's issue of the Maputo daily, Noticias, the two deputies, Luis Trinta and Simao Buti, with two other Renamo members, are accused of assaulting two of the policemen who were assigned to accompany a Renamo campaign parade.

The Director of Mozambique's Central Office for the Fight Against Corruption, Ana Maria Gemo, warned on Tuesday "corruption is not the only ill that undermines the development of the state, but it is certainly the most dangerous". Giving a lecture to an audience of over 500 in Maputo on "Corruption as an obstacle to development", Gemo said what is often referred to as "petty corruption" is widespread and "makes life impossible for citizens".