ASMARA, 16 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Hundreds of tonnes of food relief held up since July at Eritrea's Massawa port under new laws that require aid to be taxed are to be released, a senior government official said on Monday.

Eritrean labour and human welfare minister Askalu Menkerios told reporters in the capital, Asmara, that the standoff over taxes had been resolved. The ministry, she added, would pay any taxes due.

"The law says they [NGOs] should pay tax, but if it is UN agencies or bilateral support - government to government - they do not pay," the minister said. "Instead of [the NGOs] paying tax, the ministry pays."

She added: "It is resolved. Technically, if they don't have it [the food] out now, it is because they don't have the paperwork from customs."

EL FASHER, 16 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - For over 15 years, more than 30,000 people from the Dinka community of Sudan's Bahr el Ghazal State have lived in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the strife-torn western region of Darfur.

After the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) signed a peace agreement with the Khartoum government in January, many of them decided to return home.

However, southern Sudan was far from the haven they had hoped to return to; they found it desperately poor and devoid of the most basic services.

"They came back a little shocked by what they had seen in southern Sudan," Keith McKenzie, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative for the Darfur emergency, said.

JOHANNESBURG, 16 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for polio immunisation to be stepped up along Angola's borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia.

Oliver Rosenbauer, WHO's polio spokesman, noted that "the recent two cases in Angola - bringing the total to six cases in that country - were diagnosed close to the ... borders with the DRC and Zambia in the northeast".

The first of the six cases in Angola was reported in June this year; previously, the last polio case in Angola had been recorded in 2001.

KEBEMER, 16 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - With five children, a luxurious home and a husband in Italy she rarely sees, Mai Dieng is like thousands of women in her region of northern Senegal.

She knows little to nothing of her husband’s life abroad.

“Doesn’t he tell you when he comes back?” a curious neighbour asks. Dieng laughs, patting her body to suggest what happens when her husband returns home.

Dieng lives in Kebemer which lies on the main road north about 155 km from the capital Dakar. Here in this sleepy town, almost every household boasts a relative living in Italy.

“This town lives to the rhythm of emigration,” said Mansour Tall, a consultant for UN Habitat which recently sponsored a study with the Senegalese Ministry of Housing.

JOHANNESBURG, 15 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Steep production costs and political pressure is making Zimbabwean newspapers financially vulnerable, according to media sources.

"There are exorbitant costs involved. All of us [newspaper publishers] have enormous debts - we owe money to the banks," said publisher and editor Ibbo Mandaza.

"Newsprint accounts for 70 percent of our costs - it costs about Zim $20 million (about US $1,100) a tonne and we require three tonnes a day," noted Mandaza, head of the Southern Africa Publishing House (SAPHO), which owns and prints the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror.

HARARE, 15 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Ratidzai Haparingi trots along the veranda of a classroom block at the Zengeza 3 High School in Chitungwiza, a satellite town 30km east of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, occasionally stopping to check whether a classroom is vacant.

This has been her daily routine since last year, when the school introduced 'roving classes' in an attempt to alleviate classroom shortages. A 'roving class' has no permanent classroom.

When Ratidzai finds one, she scoots back to fetch her classmates waiting in the schoolyard and shepherds them to the classroom before another 'roving class' takes it.

Then she has to perform one more chore: as a prefect she has to find a teacher to take the class through its lesson, otherwise she has to lead her 40 classmates in discussing the subject. "We try to teach ourselves but at times it is the proverbial blind leading the blind," Ratidzai told IRIN.