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Maputo — Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo party picked Daniel Francisco Chapo, the 47-year-old governor of a southern province, to be its candidate for October’s presidential election, after heated internal debates that lasted three days.  Sunday’s selection of Chapo halted speculation that President Filipe Nyusi planned to cling to power at the conclusion of his term through an amendment to the constitution.  Nyusi said the endorsement puts an end to a soap opera of rumors, including talk of a possible third term. Frelimo respects the laws, he added, so there was no reason to speculate about new term limits. Nyusi also encouraged party members to support Chapo in the upcoming elections. Since Mozambique’s independence in 1975, all heads of state have been nominated by Frelimo.   The party has won all elections since multi-party democracy was introduced 30 years ago at the end of a crippling 16-year civil war which left over one million people dead and five million others internally displaced.   Chapo has been governor of Inhambane province since 2016. He holds a master’s degree in development management from a university in Mozambique. Prior to entering politics, he taught constitutional law and political science at the Universidade Catolica in the port city of Beira, and worked as an announcer at a private radio station in the same city.   After being confirmed as Frelimo’s candidate, Chapo promised to work to promote the country’s economic development.   If elected, Chapo will become Mozambique’s fourth democratically elected head of state.   Chapo is viewed by analysts as a leader who may be able to restore security in the troubled oil- and gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado, where Islamic State-linked insurgents have been terrorizing civilians and destroying public infrastructure since 2017, forcing the interruption of multibillion-dollar projects.  The violence has continued despite support by troops from other countries of the Southern African Development Community, and soldiers from Rwanda.  Economic analyst and university lecturer Alcidio Bachita has high hopes for Chapo.  “He is an individual who has not been accused of any corruption schemes,” Bachita said. “And I believe that this change of leadership will open a new page in the history of Mozambique, given that he is a young man and was born after [the] independence period of the country. So I believe that the economy of Mozambique will witness a great performance in the coming years.”   Mozambique will hold its seventh presidential and legislative elections on October 9. The deadline for presenting lists of candidates for president to the Constitutional Council is June 10.  

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

U.S. President Joe Biden commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day by condemning antisemitism and making the case that protests must be peaceful. Meanwhile, Israel rachets up its military action in Rafah and closes the border crossing there as peace talks in Cairo devolve. Ukraine and the U.S. claim that there has not been any increase in Russian military activity in Russia’s west, despite the announcement that Russia would begin training with tactical nuclear weapons there. The International Organization for Migration released its annual report. Plus, Myanmar before monsoon season starts. And are American troops headed to Nigeria?

Jerusalem — Israel is sending a delegation back to Cairo for more talks on the details of a cease-fire. The Israeli move came a day after Hamas made a surprise announcement that it accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal that Israel had previously accepted. But on Tuesday, Israeli officials said that the terms Hamas accepted are not the same as those in the original Egyptian proposal, and that the changes that Hamas is demanding make it impossible for Israel to agree. Israeli officials said the first stage of the deal envisions the release of 33 “humanitarian” hostages, meaning women, the elderly and the sick, in exchange for a six-week cease-fire and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. But now Hamas says that some of those 33 who would be freed have died. There are also questions on the timing of the release and how many Palestinian prisoners will be freed for each hostage. Brigadier General Yisrael Ziv, a former commander of the Gaza district, said that Israel’s first priority must be to bring the hostages home. “The first priority is to maximize the option for the deal,” Ziv said. “We understand that the time is running out for the life of the hostages and the maximum pressure is about that – how many people alive we can evacuate through such a deal.” Israel also has questions about reported guarantees that the U.S. and Egypt gave Hamas that Israel will not restart the war in Gaza and that the cease-fire will continue indefinitely. A U.S. government spokesman would not comment on the reports. Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said that even though the Hamas proposal falls far short of what Israel wants, Israel will negotiate in good faith. “The war cabinet unanimously decided that Israel will continue its operation in Rafah in order to apply military pressure on Hamas to release our hostages and achieve all the war’s objectives,” Mencer said. “Despite Hamas’ grandstanding, Hamas’ proposal is far from Israel’s core demands. Nevertheless, Israel will dispatch a ranking delegation to Egypt to maximize any chance of an agreement on terms acceptable to Israel.”   On Tuesday, Israeli tanks and troops took over the Palestinian side of the crossing between Israel and Egypt. The Palestinian Authority called on the U.S. to stop Israel from invading the city of Rafah. Ziv said the Israeli action to take over the crossing was a limited operation and not the large-scale invasion Israel has threatened. “The purpose of the operation is mainly to leverage the negotiations being done this time,” Ziv said, “trying to get a better deal, or to lower the demands of Hamas asking Israel to stop the war and to get into a full cease-fire.” As the war hits the seven-month mark, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said the death toll is close to 35,000, although that includes fighters and civilians. More than 1,300 people in Israel have been killed – most of them in the initial October 7 attack by Hamas – and more than 130 Israelis are still being held hostage by the militant group.

Harare — Faced with an inability to access offshore credit lines — due to defaulting on previous loans — the government of Zimbabwe is appealing to its diaspora population and foreigners to invest in the Southern African nation. Some citizens in the diaspora are skeptical that their investments would pay off. The government says the Zimbabwe Investment Summit, held Thursday to Saturday in South Africa, was meant to present the Southern African nation positively to the world. Speaking at the conference, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said Zimbabwe’s economy was one of the fastest-growing in the region, and investors should get on board. “Zimbabwe economic recovery, post-COVID, is strong," he said. "We've seen it move from strength to strength after a dip in 2019 and 2020. In 2021, the economy has been on a positive trajectory, with real GDP growth at 8.5% terms of growth — that is 6.5% in 2022 and a growth rate of 5.5% in 2023. And the growth rate is projected at 3.5% this year, slower growth than the previous three years due to the climate change shocks.” At the conference, Ncube also promoted various tax rebates and incentives for investors who import equipment, such as buses for a tourism company. However, Treasure Basopo, an economist who left Zimbabwe three years ago for Norway, says before investors can get interested, inflation has to be tamed and the country must establish confidence in the new currency, the ZiG. The currency is backed by Zimbabwe’s gold reserves, a method of establishing value that most countries abandoned many decades ago. Basopo is skeptical. "The introduction of ZiG defeats by all definitions and by all intents and purposes the characteristics or the traditional characteristics of what is money, which is basically the ability to store a valid durability, scarcity and acceptability,” he said. Inflation, meanwhile, is running at an annual rate of 55% — lower than the hyperinflation which plagued Zimbabwe in the past, but still high enough to make the cost of living difficult for most ordinary Zimbabweans. At the investment conference, Ncube voiced support for the ZiG, saying the country needs a domestic currency. “It’s a currency that is backed by reserves, gold and other precious minerals, as well as hard currency. The exchange still fluctuates," he said. "Will we share with the public how much reserves we have? Yes, we will. There will be an audit of the reserves in our vault of the reserves, and we will be able to share that information periodically to make sure that we can build the necessary confidence in the new currency.” Basopo said besides lower inflation and a stable currency, investors in the diaspora also want the right to vote in Zimbabwe's elections. “This is a government which has lost all its goodwill, and it has lost all of its international credibility to access credit facilities, and they want to harvest that money from the citizens for you to demonstrate patriotism. Which is OK, but what we need right now is for the diaspora to have the political rights enshrined within the constitution of the land — right to vote. You cannot invest in a country in which you cannot have a say. You can’t put your money without also having security of the vote,” he said. VOA made repeated efforts to talk to government officials about the conference but did not get a response. Government officials say several hundred people attended the three-day event but have not announced any new investments from the conference.

Effective April 1, 2024, we centralized the intake process of Form I-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant, and related filings under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) for self-petitioning abused spouses, children, and parents at the Nebraska Service Center.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said Tuesday his country will not back off from building a much-delayed gas pipeline with Iran.  “We will not let anyone use their veto,” Dar said at a press briefing Tuesday, without naming the United States.  Pakistan and Iran signed a Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement in June of 2009 for a pipeline that would supply 750 million to 1,000 million cubic feet per day of gas to energy-starved Pakistan from Iran's South Pars Field.  While Iran claimed in 2011 that it had completed its side of the pipeline, construction delays continue on the Pakistani side, primarily for fear of invoking U.S. sanctions.  The Biden administration has repeatedly said it does not support the Pakistan-Iran pipeline as Tehran is under U.S. sanctions for its nuclear program.  “The government will decide what, when, and how to do anything based on Pakistan’s interests. It cannot be dictated to us,” Pakistan’s foreign minister told reporters in Islamabad.  In February, Pakistan’s outgoing caretaker government approved building a small patch of the pipeline from the Iranian border into Pakistani territory to avoid billions of dollars in penalties for project delays. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government, which took office in March, has not begun construction on the project.  The pipeline received only a passing mention in a lengthy joint statement issued at the end of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Pakistan in late April, prompting speculation the project was not on track.  “We have to watch our interest. We have to look at our commitments,” Dar said, rejecting the notion Pakistan was delaying the project under U.S. pressure. However, he conceded the pipeline is “an issue that is quite complicated.”  After Raisi’s visit in which both sides agreed to boost bilateral trade to $10 billion dollars, the U.S. State Department warned, yet again, that Islamabad could face trouble for doing business with Tehran.  “Broadly we advise anyone considering business deals with Iran to be aware of the potential risk of sanctions,” Vedant Patel, State Department deputy spokesperson, said during a briefing last month.  Energy-starved and cash-strapped, the South Asian nation of some 240 million people needs cheap fuel from its neighbor. Pakistan currently meets much of its needs with expensive oil and gas imports from Gulf countries.  Iran’s arch-rival Saudi Arabia, on whom Pakistan relies heavily for financial support, is also widely believed to be opposed to the pipeline.  Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, spokesperson of Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, told media in late April that Islamabad was in talks with Washington to address concerns surrounding the pipeline.  “We have noted some statements have been made by the United States. We are also engaged with the United States and discussed the various aspects of Pakistan's energy needs,” Baloch said at a weekly press briefing.  Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs contended in the past that Islamabad does not need a sanctions waiver from Washington to build the pipeline with Tehran.  However, experts say sanctions will kick in once gas is pumped.  Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Energy have not confirmed if Islamabad has applied for a sanctions waiver from Washington.   Donald Lu, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs, told a Congressional hearing in March that Pakistan had not requested the waiver to purchase Iranian gas.

Geneva — U.N. humanitarian agencies say both the Rafah and Karem Shalom crossings into the Gaza Strip are “closed to goods and people” in both directions, essentially cutting off a lifeline for more than 2 million civilians in the embattled Palestinian territory. “We currently have no physical presence at the Rafah crossing as our access to go to that area for coordination has been denied by COGAT,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. COGAT is the Israeli agency that coordinates government activities in the Palestinian territories. “That means that the two main arteries for getting aid into Gaza have been choked off,” he said. “We are seeing the beginning of a military incursion. Rafah is in the crosshairs. IDF is ignoring all warnings about what this could mean for civilians — and the humanitarian operation — in Rafah and the entire strip,” he said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. Laerke told journalists in Geneva Tuesday that Rafah is the only entry point for fuel, noting that without diesel for trucks to transport aid inside Gaza, and without fuel to run generators, equipment, and communication, “the entire aid operation is in jeopardy.” “We have been told that there is about one day of fuel available for all of Gaza,” he said.  “If no fuel comes in for a long, prolonged period of time, it would be a very effective way of putting the humanitarian operation in its grave.” Israel ordered 100,000 Palestinians to evacuate eastern Rafah Monday to so-called safe zones, in advance of a military offensive in the southern Gaza city. This, despite Hamas agreeing Monday to a truce proposal that would see some Israeli hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office said the cease-fire proposal was “far from Israel’s essential demands,” but that Israel would send negotiators to Cairo on Tuesday to continue talks.    The United Nations says that the IDF has designated 76% of Gaza’s territory as “an evacuation zone.” That, it warns, will have terrible repercussions for the 1.2 million people in Rafah as many of the obligations enshrined in international humanitarian law governing evacuation orders are not being met. “What this means in humanitarian terms is that people are being forcibly relocated, yet again, sometimes for the fourth, fifth, sixth time, to places that are not safe,” said Ravina Shamdasani, U.N. human rights spokesperson. “These people include people who have been disabled as a result of the conduct of hostilities,” she said. “They are being relocated to places that do not have the infrastructure or the resources to be able to host the mass displacement of this large number of people with such diverse needs. “Israel has strict obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the safety and access of these individuals to medical care, to adequate food, to sanitation,” she said. “Failure to meet these obligations may amount to forced displacement, which is a war crime.” UNICEF warns that a military incursion in Rafah “would pose catastrophic risks” to hundreds of thousands of children sheltering in the enclave. “Rafah is a city of children. More than half of every single girl and boy in Gaza live in Rafah,” said James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson. “Our worst fear — Gazans’ nightmare — appears to be a reality,” he said. “If we define safety — as International Humanitarian Law says we must — as freedom from bombardment, as well as access to safe water, sufficient food, shelter and medicine —then there is nowhere safe on the Gaza strip to go to. “Families’ coping capacity has been smashed. They are hanging on — physically and psychologically — by a thread,” he said. “People are exhausted. People are malnourished. Children are sick. “In fact, hundreds of thousands of children in Rafah have a disability or vulnerability that puts them in even greater jeopardy and makes it that much more difficult for them to relocate, even if there was somewhere left to go.” The World Health Organization says only three hospitals currently are functioning in the Rafah area and “all are overwhelmed” and receiving more cases than they can handle. WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said Israel has advised people in El-Najar hospital in Rafah to leave. “Now they are not moving. They are staying open and continuing to accept patients,” she said. “They are also the only place now in Gaza where dialysis is taking place. They are doing around 200 dialyses per day. So, again, if they are no longer functioning if they are shut down, it means that those people will die simply from kidney failure because that is what is keeping them alive.” UNICEF’s Elder said children in Gaza are suffering from “an unprecedented level of trauma,” especially after this weekend’s events, which saw the continued killing of children, more attacks from the warring parties, “and now evacuation orders.” “That is what we are seeing again in these children who are told pick up your last surviving remnants of your life and we move from tent to tent.  That is also what is happening to children in Rafah now. “That has to change. Indeed, this is the last chance for this to change,” he said.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Moscow — Russia on Tuesday said it had declared U.S.-funded rights group Freedom House an "undesirable organization", effectively banning anyone from working for or having links with the group. Authorities in Russia have declared dozens of media outlets, think tanks and non-profit organizations "undesirable" since 2015, a label rights groups say is designed to deter dissent. In a statement, Russia's Prosecutor General said Freedom House had called for "comprehensive assistance to Ukraine to defeat Russia" and had "discredited" the Russian army. "The organization provides information, financial, legal and other support to Russian opposition structures, pro-Western and LGBT activists, communities defending their interests, and persons convicted of terrorist crimes," it said. Freedom House says it supports and provides funding to local democracy activists and civil liberty groups in more than 30 countries, receiving much of its financing from the U.S. State Department. It is best known for its "Freedom in the World" index that measures each country's civil liberties and labels them "Free" or "Not Free". Russia is labelled "Not Free". Since launching its offensive in Ukraine, Moscow has waged an unprecedented crackdown on dissent that rights groups have likened to Soviet-era mass repression. Among other organizations labelled as "undesirable" in Russia are the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Transparency International and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Heavy metal music is controversial in some conservative societies but quite popular in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. As VOA’s Dave Grunebaum reports, heavy metal has a home in Indonesia.

Limited medical resources in Africa force some patients to travel abroad for specialized surgeries. Now, a new special surgery institute has opened in Ghana to try and help. Senanu Tord reports from Accra, Ghana.

British citizen Peter Fouche has been volunteering with Ukraine’s Armed Forces since March 2022. Before Russia’s invasion, he was working as a carpenter in London, but after the start of the war he made the decision to travel to Ukraine to help. In January 2024, he officially enlisted in the country’s Armed Forces. Anna Kosstutschenko met with the man and learned about what motivated him.” Camera and edit: Pavel Suhodolskiy

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan said Tuesday that recent militant attacks in the country, including a deadly suicide car bombing on Chinese engineers, were planned from “terrorist sanctuaries” in Afghanistan. Major-General Ahmed Sharif, spokesperson for Pakistan’s military, leveled the allegations during a live broadcast news conference. He said Afghanistan’s Taliban government has failed to prevent the use of Afghan soil for cross-border terrorism despite repeated protests and sharing of “solid evidence” with them through diplomatic channels. In late March, a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a convoy of Chinese engineers and workers in northwestern Pakistan, killing five of them and their local driver. The slain Chinese nationals were working on a major dam project. “This attack was planned in Afghanistan, and terrorists and their facilitators were also being controlled from there,” said Sharif. “The car used in it was readied in Afghanistan, and the suicide bomber was also an Afghan national.” The spokesperson also said Pakistani security forces captured and killed several Afghan nationals who were carrying out recent terrorist attacks, adding that members of the Afghan-based, anti-Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, along with other fugitive insurgents, orchestrated the cross-border terror attacks. Explaining that the Afghanistan-based terror group is aiming to undermine peace and stability in Pakistan, Sharif said, “The main reason for the new wave of terrorism in Pakistan is the facilitation and supply of modern weapons to the TTP” by elements in the Taliban government. There was no immediate reaction from Taliban representatives, but Kabul has rejected such allegations in the past, maintaining it still bars anyone from attacking Pakistan or any country. Surging TTP and other insurgent attacks have strained Islamabad’s ties with Kabul. TTP, designated as a global terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations, is a close ally of Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban rulers. The group is known to have provided recruits and shelter to Taliban leaders in Pakistani border areas when the Taliban was staging insurgent attacks against the U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan for almost two decades. The Taliban seized power in 2021 as all foreign forces withdrew from the country. Pakistani officials and the latest United Nations assessments have documented the presence of thousands of TTP fighters on Afghan soil since the Taliban takeover. Sharif said Tuesday that growing incidents of terrorism in Pakistan prompted the government to evict undocumented Afghans and send them back to their native country. He noted that more than 563,000 Afghans living illegally in Pakistan had gone home since October, when Islamabad began its crackdown on undocumented migrants. The crackdown is not targeting an estimated 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees in the country and the more than 800,000 others carrying government-approved Afghan citizenship cards.