The presidents of China and Sudan have cemented economic ties between their countries during a state visit by Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese leader, to Beijing. China is a major buyer of Sudanese crude oil, and is keen to ensure the partition of Sudan into two states will not descend into fighting that could disrupt supplies and damage Beijing's stake on both sides of the new border.

The French military has confirmed that it airdropped weapons to civilians fighting in rebel-held areas in the western part of Libya. Colonel Thierry Burkhard, a spokesperson for the French general staff, told Al Jazeera that the military had dropped assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers to groups of unarmed civilians it deemed to be at risk. The Le Figaro newspaper and the AFP news agency reported that France had dropped several tonnes of arms, including Milan anti-tank rockets and light armoured vehicles.

This report, from 2010 and published by the Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Health, highlights 11 key categories of diseases and other health consequences that are occurring or will occur due to climate change. The report also examines a number of cross-cutting issues for research in this area, including susceptible, vulnerable, and displaced populations; public health and health care infrastructure; capacities and skills needed; and communication and education efforts.

In this article, UNHCR Public Information Intern Dasha Smith speaks to Neil Grungras, who has spent many years advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex refugees and asylum-seekers, and is the founder and executive director of the San Francisco-based Organisation for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM). This interview comes at a time when accounts increasingly emerge of persecution and violence towards refugees and asylum-seekers in parts of the world based on sexual grounds.

Child marriage is increasingly recognised as a serious problem, both as a violation of girls’ human rights and as a hindrance to key development outcomes. As more resources and action are committed to addressing this problem, it becomes important to examine past efforts and how well they have worked. This International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) report summarises a systematic review of child marriage prevention programs that have documented evaluations. Based on this synthesis of evaluated programs, the authors offer an analysis of the broader implications for viable solutions to child marriage.

The head of Egypt’s military intelligence has promised Amnesty International that the army will no longer carry out forced ‘virginity tests’ after defending their use, during a meeting with the organisation in Cairo on Sunday. Major General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), discussed the issue with Amnesty International’s Secretary General Salil Shetty months after the organisation publicized allegations of the forced ‘tests’. Major General al-Sisi said that ‘virginity tests’ had been carried out on female detainees in March to 'protect' the army against possible allegations of rape, but that such forced tests would not be carried out again.

The latest statistics from the UNHCR show where refugees come from, where they go to and how many return. The Guardian UK has created a map that explores the data by region and country.

The High Court on Sunday freed Jameson Timba, a key aide of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai but there was drama outside the courts as lawyers and MDC-T officials tried to prevent what they feared was a ploy by the police to re-arrest him. Timba, a minister of state in Tsvangirai's office, was detained on Friday after he allegedly called President Robert Mugabe a liar.

'We write to express our grave disappointment that the African Union Summit currently taking place in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, unlike previous summits, does not include a parallel civil society gathering for foreign and domestic groups.'

The International Monetary Fund said it had reached a staff-level agreement with Angolan authorities that could lead to the release of $136 million in funding to the African oil producer. IMF mission chief to Angola Mauro Mecagni said in a statement the disbursement of the next tranche under Angola's $1.4 billion loan agreement first needed the approval of the IMF's board. Some $1.25 billion has been disbursed to date. Mecagni said there had been 'considerable progress' by Angola in implementing agreed economic measures following a 2009 fiscal and balance of payments crises.

People who attended a Harare Residents Trust meeting (HRT) were left terrified after ZANU PF youths gate crashed the event and beat up guests and members. The meeting was held on Saturday (25 June) at the Mbare Netball Complex, with the aim of discussing issues affecting residents, such as the problems with power shedding and refuse collection. However, a ZANU PF mob appeared and unleashed terror. Among those who were severely beaten was Precious Shumba, HRT co-ordinator and founder, who had to be taken to hospital. Although now discharged he is still too unwell to attend work.

Readers of a Zambian Watchdog article are divided over the controversy surrounding the K5-billion that the government has released for the funeral of Fredrick Chiluba. The majority of comments to the article feel that the amount is too much and that a break down should be provided of how the money is spent, but some comments defend the expenditure. 'Why do you have to complain about the money spent? I think it’s for a good cause he was our president he deserves a decent sent off. Some of you, you don’t even pay tax why complain? You are overseas remember!!!(sic),' wrote Mthunzi Chopamba. But others are more cynicial: 'Even in death Chiluba continues to steal from us,' wrote Brainee.

With some 15 million children working in Nigeria, often in dangerous jobs, the International Trade Union Confederation has decried the alarming level of child labour in the country and anti-trade union violence in a report to the World Trade Organisation. The Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation, represents some 175 million workers in 151 countries, including Nigeria. In the report submitted to the 153-member World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, the group said that 'Some 15 million children are at work, many in dangerous jobs.'

Chadian families are facing worsening food insecurity, becoming more indebted, and selling off personal possessions as they try to cope with the loss of remittances from relatives who have returned home from Libya. Remittances, which half of the households in Chad's western and southwestern regions of Kanem and Bahr el Ghazal used to receive, are down by 57 per cent, according to a survey by NGOs Oxfam and Action Against Hunger (ACF). Households on average were sent US$220 per month.

When the monthly contraceptive injection that Bernadette Asiimwe, a mother of four, got from government health centres in western Uganda was out of stock for weeks she fell pregnant with her fifth child. By the time Assiimwe decided to pay for the contraceptive and went to Reproductive Health Uganda, a family planning association, she was already four weeks pregnant. Asiimwe is not alone -many mothers like her in western Uganda have had unintended pregnancies due to shortages of commonly used contraceptives in government health facilities.

It was apparent at the 13th annual strategy meeting of the African Initiative on Mining, Environment and Society (Aimes) held in Harare last week that challenges posed by the mining industry are similar throughout the continent. The event, which was organised by the Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association (Zela) and Third World Network-Africa in collaboration with ActionAid International (Zimbabwe), ran from 21-24 June. Held under the theme: 'The African Mining Reform Agenda: Mobilising for Developmental Impacts', the meeting saw Aimes member countries, among them Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Ghana, DRC, Zambia, and Zimbabwe taking part. The Aimes meeting, among its many objectives, aimed at coming up with strategies to vigorously advocate for mining companies to not only accept the need to have a CSR policy, but to make it mandatory.

Egypt's government has announced an ambitious plan for a tenfold increase in spending on scientific research within the next three years, at an event where the prime minister declared science as a top priority. It plans to raise the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on scientific research from 0.23 per cent to two per cent. But critics say this is too much, too fast.

South African President Jacob Zuma slammed Nato’s operation in Libya at the opening of the African Union’s (AU) Libya panel meeting in Pretoria. Rebels said they expected a proposal from Moamer Kadhafi 'very soon' through French and South African intermediaries. The UN resolution authorising the Nato bombing campaign 'was not to authorise a campaign for regime change or political assassination', Zuma reportedly told opening talks of the AU panel on Libya.

'Thursday June 23 was indeed a historic day in the life of the Nation that we the youth of Senegal will never forget,' says this article on the afro-optimism blog. 'The Nation came out, in all of its glory and fury, men and women, youth and old, poor and rich, swift politicians and lay common men/women, and took to the streets together as one to contest a law proposal orchestrated by the Presidency that was to change the rules of the electoral game to enable an easy reelection for Abdoulaye Wade for a third seven-year term in the upcoming February 2012 election.'

Nationalisation is an attempt by the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) to save black economic empowerment (BEE) 'elements in crisis', and will not help the poor, South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande said. At the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) central committee meeting, he warned against the call for nationalisation by elements in the ANCYL, 'whose intention is to save these BEE elements in crisis, and not to address the interests of the workers and the poor in the country'. Putting privately owned assets in the hands of the state is not 'inherently progressive' as it depends on which class interests are being advanced.