Britain will send a team of experienced military officers to Libya to help support and advise the country's opposition council, the UK foreign minister has said. William Hague said that military advisers would join a group of British diplomats already co-operating with the Libyan National Transitional Council, based in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. 'They will advise the National Transitional Council on how to improve their military organisational structures, communications and logistics, including how best to distribute humanitarian aid and deliver medical assistance,' he said.

The United Nations has appealed for a ceasefire in the Libyan city of Misrata, saying at least 20 children had been killed in attacks by besieging government forces on rebel-held parts of the city. Libya's third city, where hundreds are believed to have been killed by shelling and sniper fire by Muammar Gaddafi's forces, is the main focus of efforts to protect civilians caught up in the Libyan leader's bid to put down an armed rebellion.

Ghana’s investment in organic farming could transform the country’s agriculture sector and improve the country’s economy dramatically, reports Journalists for Human Rights. One small organic project is called the Abusua Sustainable Organic Farm (ASOF) is attempting to tap into the organic industry and convince the country of the benefits in organic farming.

The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for International Photography is currently seeking to award one social documentary photographic project produced in the journalistic tradition of Manuel Rivera-Ortiz. One project based on pressing social issues in the developing world will receive a grant of 5,000 USD to be utilised for the production or completion of a pre-approved project.

The death of Andries Tatane at the hands of police officers has forced South Africans to question the direction in which the nation's law-enforcement body is moving. Tatane, a teacher, activist, husband and father of two young sons, was among a group of about 4 000 Meqheleng township residents who marched on the Ficksburg municipal offices. Observers have noted the increasing brutality of the police force over the past few years. In 2009, the police chief raised eyebrows when he called for a change to legislation that would allow police offers greater freedom to shoot at suspects.

Zambia has frozen LAP Green Network’s 75 per cent shares in Zamtel in conformity with the international community’s decision to freeze all assets belonging to Libya following the unrest in the Arab country, Zamtel managing director Hans Paulsen said in Lusaka on 15 April. The international community has been freezing some Libyan assets dotted across the globe. Mr Paulsen said Zamtel will not be affected by the new development and there is no need for customers to worry.

Jacob Zuma is facing pressure to clarify the situation of a close ally, Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka, against whom there have been serious allegations of wasteful and possibly fraudulent use of state resources. The public protector has been asked to probe Shiceka’s spending of R335,000 on a trip to Switzerland, R640,000 in one year to stay at the One&Only Hotel, and R160,000 in eight months flying his extended family round the country. The Sunday Times has reported that there is deep unhappiness in Shiceka’s home village of Ingquza Hill in the Eastern Cape, where water has been laid on for the building of a house for the minister and a R32m tarred road is being routed past this house, which would be among the first in the area to be electrified.

Civilians evacuated from the war-ravaged western Libyan city of Misrata have described the humanitarian situation there as grim, saying families are barely able to find enough food and water, that medical treatment is hard to come by, and corpses are lying in the streets. 'We could hear the snipers picking people off in the street outside,' said Mariam Doua, a teacher in the city. 'Eventually some [rebel fighters] came to lead us to safety in the middle of the night when the militia were dozing. We covered the mouths of the children and ran out into the street, barefoot.'

A new policy on education will be in place before the end of next year, the Ministry of Education has pledged. The number of those in need of basic education, both young and old, has ballooned. The new policy is expected to tackle ways of improving access of education to this number (about 10 million children), fight cultural barriers to education such as female genital mutilation and how to keep children in school even in the worst climatic conditions like drought.

Boubacar Diallo Badiane

Horace Campbell

Michael Neocosmos

Burkina Faso's government will hold talks with soldiers to discuss issues which led to a military mutiny and days of unrest across the West African nation. The mutiny, which began with shooting near the presidential palace, triggered riots and looting in the capital, Ouagadougou, and in other towns and cities.

Up to 200,000 deaths from severe malaria could be averted each year if malarial countries were to switch to a more expensive but more effective drug, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said. In a report on the mosquito-borne disease, MSF said data from recent trials in Africa had shown that the drug, called artesunate, was more effective and easier to use than quinine, a cheaper malaria medicine often used in poorer countries.

A joint statement calling for the Ugandan Government to amend discriminatory clauses contained in the HIV and Aids Prevention and Control Bill which is set to be passed by the government, was presented on 8 April 2011 by the Uganda Health and Science Press Association (UHSPA-Uganda). 'It is impossible to prevent and control HIV and AIDS without addressing the needs and concerns of LGBTI persons. Such a law would be doomed to fail from the very start since, criminal laws such the Ugandan Penal Code hamper HIV and AIDS prevention efforts, as do provisions of the HIV and AIDS Bill,' states the memorandum.

Cyberattacks, politically motivated censorship, and government control over internet infrastructure are among the diverse and growing threats to internet freedom, according to 'Freedom on the Net 2011: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media', a new study released on 18 April by Freedom House. These encroachments on internet freedom come at a time of explosive growth in the number of internet users worldwide, which has doubled over the past five years. Governments are responding to the increased influence of the new medium by seeking to control online activity, restricting the free flow of information, and otherwise infringing on the rights of users.

The April/May edition of Amandla! Magazine is now available in bookshops across South Africa. The issue focuses on two major issues confronting progressives and left activists: the up-coming local government elections and the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East.

Gay Kenya is pleased to bring you their 8th newsletter edition. The headline feature is named ‘The Law is an Arse’ and is on the de-criminalisation process, so far undertaken by the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK) that seeks to make private, consensual same sex activity between adults not criminal.

According to the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), 60 per cent of Nairobi’s population lives on five per cent of the land. The city’s overcrowded slums and informal settlements, constructed from cheap materials like corrugated iron and connected to hazardous electricity lines, make them particularly vulnerable to fire. Access roads are few, making passage difficult for fire trucks.

Mutinous soldiers have rampaged through a southern town in Bukina Faso as the revolt against Blaise Compaore, the West African nation's ruler, enters its fourth day. Soldiers at a military garrison in Po, near the Ghana border, fired in the air, looting and seizing private vehicles, residents told the AFP news agency. Compaore, who came to power in a 1987 military coup, has faced a series of protests since February, staged first by students and then by soldiers. He won a new five-year term in office after taking 80 per cent of the votes in November elections.

In Eilat, the small city in Israel, refugees find their children barred from municipal schools. And in a move that has alarmed both human rights organisations and the local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the municipality has hung red flags throughout the city as part of a municipal campaign against African migrants - initiated by employees of the state of Israel and financed with public funds.

Kenyan AIDS activists are furious about a plan by the government to implement a two percent tax increase on medicines, which they say will hurt poor people living with HIV. In November 2010, Kenya's Minister for Medical Services issued a gazette notice imposing the new tax on drugs to help fund the Pharmacy and Poisons Board, the government body mandated to regulate drugs in the country. The Kenya Revenue Authority already collects a 2.75 per cent tax on medicines.