*Evening News Round-up: Friday 28 February 2025* *Headlines* *MPs Exempted From Paying City Parking, Tollgate Fees; Opposition Rubbishes New Benefits* *New Harare Municipal Police Unit Targets Vendors And Litterbugs* *Malawi Lowers 2025 Growth Forecast As Inflation Spurs Protests* *US HIV Funding Cut Is 'Wake-up Call' For S Africa* *Namibia's Top Court Dismisses Opposition Election Challenge* *Talks Under Way In Egypt Over Phase Two Of Israel-Hamas Ceasefire In Gaza* *Zelenskiy Urges Trump To Make No Compromises With Russia* *Dozens Missing In Indian Himalayas Avalanche* *Messi "Wasn't Happy On A Daily Basis" At PSG* Join our *Ad-free* News Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VacXkvFJJhzd2UoZYF1F *Stories in Detail:* *MPs Exempted From Paying City Parking, Tollgate Fees; Opposition Rubbishes New Benefits* The speaker of the National Assembly and Parliament, Jacob Mudenda, on Wednesday announced that the Members of Parliament (MPs) will no longer be required to pay parking fees in Harare’s Central Business District. Each MP is entitled to exempt two vehicles from parking fees, which are pegged at US$1 per hour in Harare. “I also wish to inform the House that the Administration of Parliament has reached an agreement with the City Parking to exempt two vehicles belonging to each of the Members of Parliament from paying parking fees in the Harare Central Business District. “You are therefore requested to submit copies of registration of the two vehicles to the Human Capital Department in office No. 340 on the Third Floor in order to finalise the arrangements,” said Mudenda. In addition to the parking privileges, MPs will also get free tollgate passage on selected express tollgate lanes. “I wish to inform the House that ZINARA has introduced express lanes to Government exempted vehicles at selected tollgates; starting with a pilot programme at Skyline, Dema and Eskbank tollgates. The infrastructure has been established featuring extra wide detour lanes designated as ‘Express Lanes’. To use the express lane, vehicles must be equipped with an e-tag which will be scanned by the system. Once detected, the boom banner will automatically open. ”Please note that express lanes will not have a cashier on duty. In line with this, the ZINARA team will visit the new Parliament Building on the 26th of February and 5th March 2025 from 0900 hours to 1600 hours for the installation of the e-tags. “All Members of Parliament are encouraged to bring their two exempted vehicles along with their registration books for this installation exercise. Kindly note that failure to have electronic tags installed on exempt vehicles may cause significant inconvenience when passing through the tollgates. For more information, please visit Human Capital Department in office No. 340,” said Mudenda. The leader of the opposition Labour, Economists and African Democrats (LEAD) Linda Masarira rubbished the new benefits for MPs, saying they already have enough benefits. “The recent revelation that Zimbabwean Members of Parliament (MPs) and Senators now enjoy free tollgate passage, free parking, and the registration of two vehicles exempt from toll fees is yet another blatant display of elite privilege in a country where millions struggle to afford basic necessities. This new perk, added to their long list of extravagant benefits, is a direct insult to the suffering masses. “While ordinary Zimbabweans are burdened with high transport costs, poor wages, and relentless economic hardships, our lawmakers continue to prioritize their own comfort over the needs of the people who elected them,” said Masarira on X. *NewZW* *New Harare Municipal Police Unit Targets Vendors And Litterbugs* The City of Harare has set up a new municipal police unit to crack down on illegal traders, people who litter, and those who roast green maize in the city centre. Mayor Jacob Mafume said this during a meeting at Town House on Thursday. He said the council wants to restore order in the city. Said Mafume: We have created a special unit in our municipal police, that is going to be enforcing anti-litter by-laws. Certainly, in other countries, you don’t roast maize in the middle of town and so forth. These are the things that we are going to be planning back on with the special units of the police to make sure that the areas are clean. Mafume also said that the council is committed to providing informal traders with safe and proper vending spaces. He said: We need to have some streets where we do not permit anyone to sell anything in the market or anywhere and then other streets we can agree, after consultation with the informal sector and the residents, where we can allow them to be able to do the same implementation for designated areas, so that we can establish policies. However, in an interview with NewsDay, Combined Harare Residents Association director Ruben Akili said the council is responsible for the lawlessness in the city centre due to its failure to provide alternative vending spaces. Akili added that the local authority likely spends more on enforcement than on building markets. He said: Resources must be channelled towards building markets in areas where these people can be allowed to do their work. While there are no official statistics on the number of informal traders in Harare, estimates suggest there are thousands, driven by the ongoing closure of companies and the shortage of formal employment opportunities. *Pindula* *Malawi Lowers 2025 Growth Forecast As Inflation Spurs Protests* Malawi's government trimmed its economic growth forecast for this year in its annual budget on Friday as disgruntled citizens protested in major cities over rising prices. The protesters are mostly street vendors who accuse the government of failing to control double-digit inflation, which they say is putting them out of business. As their demonstrations have spread from the capital Lilongwe to the main commercial city Blantyre, they have been joined on the streets by jobless youths unhappy with President Lazarus Chakwera's government. Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola Banda said in his budget speech that the donor-dependent Southern African country's economy was expected to grow 3.2% in 2025, down from a forecast of 4.0% given in December. Last year's growth was estimated at 1.8% because of the impact of a severe regional drought that dented agricultural output, the mainstay of the economy. Inflation was at 28.5% year on year in January, driven higher by crippling foreign exchange shortages that have curbed imports of key goods like fuel and fertiliser and led to a thriving black market for foreign currency. Banda said the government hoped to address the forex shortages by boosting production in sectors that could bring in dollars, like agriculture, tourism and mining. He said a national anti-crime unit would be set up to crack down on the parallel market for foreign currency. The current fiscal year's budget deficit is estimated at 9.6% of gross domestic product (GDP), while next year's is seen at 9.5% of GDP. Public debt stood at roughly 86% of GDP in September 2024, and the government is continuing to try to bring debt-restructuring negotiations to a close. "Government in principle has reached agreements with all official bilateral creditors and is still negotiating with commercial creditors to restructure debt," Banda said. "Once the negotiations are completed, the initiative will ease the pressure on foreign exchange and provide fiscal space necessary for productive investment." *Reuters* *US HIV Funding Cut Is 'Wake-up Call' For S Africa* The US government's sudden decision to axe funding for HIV programmes is a "wake-up call" for South Africa, the country's health minister has told the BBC. Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, responding to US termination notices issued late on Wednesday, said the cuts could lead to deaths, but he had instructed state-funded clinics to ensure no patient went without life-saving drugs. There is chaos as many affected organisations scramble to find alternative help for some 900,000 HIV patients by the end of the day. "Instead of a careful handover, we're being pushed off a cliff," said Kate Rees from the Anova Health Institute, one of the biggest recipients of special US funding to counter the spread of HIV. These cuts to the US's HIV programme, known as the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), are part of wider cost-cutting drive to reduce American government spending. Pepfar was launched in 2003 by then US President George W Bush and its funding is distributed via the US government's main overseas aid agency USAID. It has been regarded as a ground-breaking scheme that has enabled some of the world's poorest people to access anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) and has saved more than 25 million lives worldwide. A 90-day freeze on US foreign aid payments instituted by President Donald Trump on his first day in office last month has already upended the global aid system. South Africa is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Pepfar, which contributes about 17% to its HIV/Aids programme, in which about 5.5 million people out of eight million people living with HIV receive ARVs. Like all such US-funded organisations in South Africa, the Anova Health Institute was notified overnight on Wednesday about the decision by US President Donald Trump's administration to terminate tens of billions of dollars of aid contracts. Dr Rees described the announcement as one of the "worst days" of her career, especially as there had been plans afoot to reduce the dependency of HIV programmes on donor aid. This was to take place over the next five years, making it easier for the country's health department to take over, she said. Health experts say Pepfar funding was also helping with research for a cure for HIV, and that the cuts would set that work back years. The Desmond Tutu Health Foundation projects the US's move could result in as many as half a million deaths. South Africa's leading Aids lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), warned the country could see a return to when HIV patients struggled to access necessary services for their treatment. "We can't afford to die, we can't afford to go back to those years where we were suffering with access to services, especially for people living with HIV treatment," said TAC chair Sibongile Tshabalala. She was speaking during a digital news conference on Thursday, in which representatives from organisations that work with HIV patients described the chaos and despair caused by the termination of the funding. Ms Tshabalala, who has HIV, became emotional as she questioned how she and others like her would survive in the wake of the funding cuts. South Africa's ARV programme is the largest in the world. *BBC* *Namibia's Top Court Dismisses Opposition Election Challenge* Namibia's Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a challenge against last year's presidential election brought by opposition parties, clearing the way for the ruling party's Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah to take office next month. The Southern African country's SWAPO party, which has governed the nation of around 3 million people for more than three decades, won both the presidential and parliamentary elections in November. Opposition parties alleged the election was flawed and potentially invalid due to an extension of voting for several days, among other issues. Namibia's Chief Justice Peter Shivute ruled that the decision to extend voting was lawful and dismissed the challenge brought by the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), which came second in the polls. In its case, the IPC was joined by another opposition party, the Landless People's Movement. "Their challenge to the outcome for the 2024 presidential election ... fails," Shivute said. The IPC's leader and presidential candidate last year, Panduleni Itula, said his party would abide by the judgment. "We are not going to the streets to demonstrate or anything like that," Itula said. Nandi-Ndaitwah will be sworn-in as Namibia's first female president on March 21. *Reuters* *Talks Under Way In Egypt Over Phase Two Of Israel-Hamas Ceasefire In Gaza* Talks are under way in Egypt over the second phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza, the first phase of which ends on Saturday. Officials from Israel joined mediators from Qatar and the United States in Cairo on Thursday for “intensive discussions”, Egypt’s state information service said on Friday. US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, may join the talks. Talks over the second phase of the ceasefire are meant to negotiate a comprehensive end to the fighting in Gaza, including the return of all remaining living captives and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory. According to Israel, there are 59 captives remaining in Gaza, 24 of whom are still believed to be alive. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said the government is uncertain about the prospects of reaching a deal, adding the Israeli team in Cairo would have to “see whether we have common ground to negotiate”. “We said we are ready to extend the framework [of phase one] in return for the release of more hostages,” Sa’ar said at a news conference Thursday. “If it is possible, we’ll do that.” In a statement on Friday, Hamas urged Israel to move on to the second phase of the ceasefire deal, and confirmed its “full commitment to implementing all the terms of the agreement in all its stages and details”. “We call on the international community to pressure the Zionist occupation to fully commit to its role in the agreement and to immediately implement the second phase of it without any hesitation or evasion.” It remains to be seen whether a deal can be reconciled given the declared war objectives of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, with US President Donald Trump’s backing, has pledged to eliminate Hamas. Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from the Jordanian capital Amman, said Israel is pushing a 42-day extension of the first phase of the ceasefire. “In it, Israel would allow some of the humanitarian assistance, some of those tents and mobile homes and heavy equipment that it was supposed to deliver … into Gaza during phase one, in exchange for Hamas giving up the only leverage it has, which is the presence of Israeli captives,” Odeh said. This has been rejected by Hamas, Odeh said. “Israel has been telling us for months now, with word and deed, that it doesn’t actually intend to end the war,” Mohamad Elmasry, a political analyst at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera. “Barring Hamas leaving Gaza, which is not going to happen, Israel is fully intent I think on going back to war.” The negotiations come after Hamas handed over the remains of four captives overnight on Thursday, in exchange for more than 600 Palestinian prisoners, in the last planned swap of the ceasefire’s first phase. Israel had postponed the release of 46 of these prisoners, all women and children, due to delays in verifying the bodies of four of the captives it received. In a sign that Israel was preparing a further breach of the truce terms, an Israeli official on Thursday said Israeli forces would not withdraw as planned from the Philadelphi Corridor – the long strip of land in southern Gaza that adjoins Egypt Egypt. Under the truce deal, Israel’s military is supposed to begin pulling out of the corridor on Saturday and finish its withdrawal within eight days. The ceasefire, which began on January 19, halted 15 months of war that erupted after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 that killed at least 1,139 people and saw some 250 others taken captive. Israel’s war in Gaza has since killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials, while displacing more than 90 percent of the enclave’s population and destroying most of the Gaza Strip. *Aljazeera* *Zelenskiy Urges Trump To Make No Compromises With Russia* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged President Donald Trump on Friday to make "no compromises with a killer," referring to Russia's leader, as they met to sign a deal for U.S. participation in Ukraine's mineral industry. Trump and Zelenskiy sat down for talks in the Oval Office as Kyiv works to bolster U.S. support and Trump opens talks with Moscow. Zelenskiy, who gained billions of dollars' worth of U.S. weaponry and moral support from the Biden administration for its fight against Russia, is facing a sharply different attitude from Trump. Trump wants to quickly wind down the three-year war, improve ties with Russia and recoup money spent to support Ukraine. Trump welcomed Zelenskiy on his arrival at the White House before they headed for talks, lunch and then a joint press conference where they were to sign the agreement. "I hope I'm going to be remembered as a peacemaker," Trump said. Zelenskiy used blunt language to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging Trump to make "no compromises with a killer." Trump told Zelenskiy that his soldiers have been unbelievably brave and that the United States wants to see an end to the fighting and the money put to "different kinds of use like rebuilding." Trump has adopted a much less committed stance toward European security, a change in tone that has sent shockwaves across Europe and stoked fears in Kyiv and among its allies that it could be forced into a peace deal that favours Russia. The agreement negotiated in recent days would open up Ukraine's vast mineral wealth to the United States but does not include explicit American security guarantees for Ukraine, a disappointment for Kyiv. Trump says the presence of Americans in business would serve as a form of guarantee. How much the deal would be worth to the United States is not spelled out. Trump has said he expects to gain hundreds of billions of dollars. Zelenskiy has said he would not sign an agreement that would put his country in debt for generations. Ukraine would contribute 50% of "all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets" to a reconstruction fund jointly owned and managed by the United States and Ukraine. The agreement does not specify how the funds would be spent, or identify specific assets it covers, though it says they would include deposits of minerals, oil and natural gas as well as infrastructure such as gas terminals and ports. The Washington talks are a diplomatic boost for Zelenskiy who has repeatedly spoken of the importance of meeting Trump in person before the U.S. president holds talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "The Ukrainians have been quite savvy at turning it round, and using this (the minerals deal) as an opening to engage the U.S.," said a senior Kyiv-based European diplomat, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Kyiv hopes the agreement will spur Trump to back Ukraine's war effort, and potentially even win support from Republicans in Congress for a new round of aid. Ukraine has rapidly expanded its defence industry production but remains heavily reliant on foreign military assistance, while also struggling to replenish manpower as it battles a much larger foe. While Ukraine repelled Russia's invasion from the outskirts of Kyiv and recaptured swathes of territory in 2022, Russia still controls around a fifth of Ukraine and has been slowly taking ground since a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023. Kyiv's troops hold a chunk of land in Russia's western Kursk region after a 2024 incursion. Trump has engaged in a long-distance feud with Zelenskiy in recent weeks, criticizing his handling of the war, calling him a "dictator" and urging him to agree to the minerals deal. But asked about the dictator comment during a joint news conference with visiting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, Trump said: "Did I say that? I can't believe I said that." Starmer said he and Trump had discussed a plan to reach a peace that is "tough and fair, that Ukraine will help shape, that is backed by strength to stop Putin coming back for more". Starmer said Britain was prepared to contribute military personnel to serve as peacekeepers "because that is the only way that peace will last." Trump dodged a plea from Starmer for U.S. participation. *Reuters* *Dozens Missing In Indian Himalayas Avalanche* At least 25 road workers remain trapped after a massive avalanche struck a remote border area in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, officials say. Senior district official Sandeep Tiwari told BBC Hindi that 32 workers had been rescued and moved to an army camp nearby. The avalanche hit a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp in the village of Mana, which shares a border with Tibet, officials say. Officials said rescue operations were continuing in extreme weather amid heavy snowfall. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami wrote on X that rescue work was being carried out by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the BRO and other teams. Ambulances and emergency teams have been dispatched, but treacherous conditions continue to pose challenges for rescuers. Footage posted on X by ITBP showed rescuers carrying people on stretchers and walking through several feet of snow - even as more snow continued to fall. Colonel Ankur Mahajan, a commander with the BRO, told the Hindustan Times newspaper that those who had been rescued were receiving treatment "but the extent of their injuries is unclear". Gaurav Kunwar, a former village council member of Mana, told BBC News that details of the incident were sketchy. "No-one lives there permanently. It's a migratory area and only labourers working on border roads stay there in the winter. There's also some army presence there. We've heard that it has been raining in the area for two days. The road workers were in a camp when the avalanche hit." Earlier on Friday, the India Meteorological Department warned of heavy rainfall and snow in the northern Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand as well as Jammu and Kashmir. Orange alerts have also been issued for snowfall in several districts of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. *BBC* *Messi "Wasn't Happy On A Daily Basis" At PSG* Lionel Messi says he "didn't enjoy" playing for Paris St-Germain during his two-year spell at the club. The 37-year-old joined the French side in 2021 after 21 years at Barcelona. Messi scored 32 goals and provided 35 assists in 76 appearances before leaving two years ago for Inter Miami, co-owned by David Beckham, in Major League Soccer. In an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, the eight-time Ballon d'Or winner said: "Coming to play for Inter Miami was an opportunity and the way things developed during my last years in Paris, although it was a decision that I had to make on the go, because I had to leave from Barcelona, I went through two years which I didn't enjoy. "I wasn't happy on a daily basis, with the training, the matches. I had a hard time adapting to all that. I felt called to come to Inter [Miami] because it's a club that's growing, very new, with few years as a club." PSG chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi criticised Messi, external for lacking "respect" for the French club when he left them. At the time, the Argentine said his relationship with PSG fans "fractured" after a "significant" number of supporters started to treat him differently. Since joining Inter Miami, Messi has wanted to help both the club and MLS continue to "grow", contributing 36 goals and 20 assists in 42 appearances. He is also looking forward to Miami hosting the 2025 Fifa Club World Cup, which will feature PSG as well as Premier League sides Manchester City and Chelsea. "I think this is very important for the club, especially, to participate for the first time in a World Cup that will take place in the country and for the MLS to have two teams is a wonderful thing," added Messi. "Everything that's happening creates an opportunity for the MLS to keep growing in football, as a league. And for other players to have the opportunity to come and keep growing." *BBC*