The Tanzanian government has denied that it is broke even, as analysts view the current situation as giving hints that the country is going through a financial crisis. Finance and economic affairs minister Mustafa Mkulo was refuting claims by Kigoma North MP Mr Zitto Kabwe who is also Finance shadow minister, who was quoted in the media at the weekend as saying the government was in 'dire financial straits' that has forced it to resort to borrowing to pay salaries. Kabwe had said the government delayed the April salaries to most of its workers. The Citizen established that a number of state employees had their April salaries delayed.

UN investigators in Côte d'Ivoire have determined there were at least 68 bodies spread out across 10 burial mounds in a mass grave recently discovered on a soccer field in Abidjan, the country's commercial capital. Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy director of the human rights division of the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire, said on Monday (09 May) the victims were probably killed by pro-Laurent Gbagbo militias on 12 April, the day after the strongman was arrested.

Wavah Broadcasting Service (WBS) TV journalist Williams Ntege was arrested by anti-riot police on 2 May after he was caught filming the arrest of Kampala female Member of Parliament (MP) Nabirah Ssempala. Ntege says that during his arrest, one armed, plainclothes officer threatened to shoot him on accusations that he was inciting violence.

In this Al Jazeera video interview with Cornel West, the intellectual and author provides his analysis of Barack Obama's presidency and discusses recent global developments. The bestselling author argues that we are living in 'catastophic, catatonic, and catalytic' times, but we must face them with compassion.

'The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has decided to break its silence and add its lone voice amongst the progressive forces in condemning the brutal rape and stoning to death with bricks of Noxola Nogwaza, KwaThema township, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng province. As Numsa we abhor homophobia with all its manifestations since its against the noble objectives of a non sexist society as envisaged in the Freedom Charter.'

Forty per cent of South Africa's 48-million people are poor and more than half of poor people are female, notes Jocelyn Newmarch, the author of an Earthlife Africa Johannesburg report 'Second Class Citizens: Gender, Energy and Climate Change in South Africa'. 'About 2,5-million households are still without any access to electricity and four million households do not use electricity for cooking. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that, assuming a household of five people, 20-million people still rely on polluting fuels and they are more likely to be female.'

The dominant approaches to development have failed the world’s poorest citizens and now the paradigm must change. This is the strong message coming from over 2,000 non-governmental organisations gathered at the civil society forum for the Fourth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) in Istanbul, Turkey. Arjun Karki, spokesperson for the forum, told the gathering that the failure to see more LDC countries graduate from this most vulnerable classification reflects a serious failure of the model of development aid advanced by leading players in the international community.

Democratic Republic of Congo's plans to hold parliamentary and presidential elections in November are unconstitutional and unrealistic, the country's leading opposition parties said on Sunday. A statement noted voter registration had been completed in only two of 11 provinces and warned the poll could be delayed. The opposition said it was still determined to take part. The statement also criticised security in the build-up to the vote, repeating accusations that opposition supporters have been intimidated, attacked and killed by the authorities.

Sub-Saharan African countries have claimed nine of the ten bottom places in a ranking of maternal health around the world. 'The Mothers' Index', a new survey of motherhood by Save the Children, analyses health, education and economic conditions for women and children in 164 countries. Ironically, it is in giving birth - and multiple births for that matter - that a woman nears an approximate of the ideal of a wife,' says Kolorinda James, a traditional birth attendant (TBA) in Juba, South Sudan. 'Children are considered to be a sign of wealth. It is a case of the content being valued much more than the container - as thousands of women in this region continue to die from pregnancy related complications.'

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned. A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

Twenty-six children died from measles out of 445 cases recorded in Angola's northern enclave province of Cabinda since the start of the outbreak in 2010, the official news agency Angop reported. Particularly in malnourished children and people with reduced immunity, measles can cause serious complications, including blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhoea, ear infection and pneumonia or even deaths.

South African artists are bowing to the pressure from the ANC Youth League to cut all ties with the Kingdom of Swaziland. After the youth league urged all South Africans invited to Swaziland for the celebrations of King Mswati III’s birthday and his sons’ concert, moves to boycott the tyrannic state have escalated. The boycott is aimed at the Swazi king, his family and friends.

Malawi continues to have the highest number of child labourers in Southern Africa, with more than 78,000 children working on tobacco farms, according to child rights NGO Plan. The health risks are high. The handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing and the children absorb up to 54mg of dissolved nicotine through their skin - which is equal to smoking 50 cigarettes. As a result, many suffer from green tobacco sickness (GTS). The symptoms including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.

Beatings, assaults, torture, manipulation of the party structures, tribalism, nepotism, cooked up voters’ rolls, intolerance, vote buying, elections taking place under the cover of darkness, the use of long incumbency to remain in power and the imposition of candidates by the party’s top leadership. The above describes how the leadership of the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) is managing its provincial congresses ahead of the party’s national congress in Bulawayo at the end of April, says the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

Delegations from Reclaiming Public Water Network and Public Services International participated in the Global Water Operator Partnerships (GWOPA) Congress held on 20-21 March in Cape Town, South Africa. This video features unionists, activists as well as public water managers from Spain, Morocco, Netherlands and Uruguay who present their vision for Public Public Partnerships in the water sector. The video is a Transnational Institute/Public Services International Production and was filmed and edited by Liane Greeff of EcoDoc Africa, with music provided by Roy MacGregor.

'On the 5th May 2011, a 14 years old transman was raped in Attredgeville, Pretoria. He was left unconscious and traumatized by the perpetrators. The transman is believed to have been raped on his way to school. According to the victim’s mother, the school phoned her after one teacher realized that the victim was crying and bleeding from his genitals.'

Drug regimens used in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV are effective, but infants should be monitored for drug resistance, a new study has revealed. The study in Kisumu, western Kenya, found that the triple combination of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs given to HIV-infected mothers to prevent transmission of the virus to their infants was effective and feasible, but there were cases of possible drug resistance in HIV-positive infants.

While foreign direct investment in least developed countries (LDCs) in Africa has risen sharply over the past decade, most of it went to resource-rich economies and had little impact on employment creation.
On the eve of the fourth United Nations’ conference on LDCs, UNCTAD has launched a study on the developmental effects of foreign direct investment (FDI), adopted at the 2001 LDCs conference as one of the tools to foster development in poor countries. The study, called 'FDI in LDCs: Lessons learned from the decade 2001 – 2010', shows the results are at best mixed.

Libyan regime forces laying siege on Misrata intensified their assault on the lifeline port on 8 May as smoke billowed from a fuel depot bombing, attacks a rights group said may amount to an atrocity. Two loud explosions were also heard in Tripoli, where the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has its headquarters, as jets flew overhead, witnesses said.

Rwanda could become the first country in Africa to effectively fight cervical cancer following the launch of a comprehensive national prevention programme last week. Rwanda will be the first country in Africa to offer a national prevention programme that includes the most advanced technologies and tools to protect girls and women from the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) that causes cervical cancer. HPV is a very common sexually transmitted infection among women worldwide, with more than 270,000 dying each year.