Amnesty International has welcomed a Zimbabwe court's decision to acquit a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights activist charged with possession of pornographic materials.Ellen Chademana, an administrative assistant at the prominent NGO Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), was acquitted by a magistrate's court in Harare. The charges followed an armed police raid on the GALZ offices in Milton Park Harare in May.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been accused of siphoning off up to $9bn (£5.6bn; 7bn euros) of his country's funds by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Luis Moreno Ocampo told the BBC that President Bashir had hidden the money in personal accounts outside Sudan. Mr Ocampo's suspicions originally came to light when a diplomatic cable obtained by Wikileaks was published by the Guardian newspaper. Sudan has forcefully denied the claims.

Reports sent to Greenpeace indicate that more than 200,000 cubic litres of radioactive sludge from three cracked waste pools have been leaking into the environment at the SOMAIR uranium mine in Niger since 11 December 11, says Greenpeace. 'This new leakage shows that the bad practices at the AREVA uranium mines in Niger continue to threaten the health and safety of people and the environment,' said Rianne Teule, energy campaigner for Greenpeace Africa.

Reactions to the diplomatic cables released by the whistleblower website Wikileaks continue to flourish all over the blogosphere. Revelations concerning the conflict over Western Sahara have sparked a few comments. Ali Amar is a Moroccan journalist. Writing on VoxMaroc [Fr], a blog hosted by the French daily Le Monde, he underlines the fact that although the leaked cables revealed American diplomats' reservations about bad governance and corruption in Morocco, they showed unwavering American support for the kingdom's position on Western Sahara.

Zimbabwe's Central Bank governor Gideon Gono Saturday filed a US$ 12.5 million lawsuit against a private newspaper, which implicated him in diamond smuggling, citing Wikileaks cables. The lawsuit is the second in the week against the Standard newspaper, which was earlier landed with a US$ 15 million suit by First Lady Grace Mugabe over the same allegations. The paper, quoting Wikileaks cables, reported last week that Mugabe and Gono were among several top officials involved in diamond smuggling from newly discovered fields in the east of the country.

The Tanzanian prosecutor investigating worldwide misconduct by BAE, Britain’s biggest arms company, confided to US diplomats that 'his life may be in danger' and senior politicians in his small African country were 'untouchable'. A leaked account of what the head of Tanzania’s anti-corruption bureau, Edward Hoseah, termed the 'dirty deal' by BAE to sell Tanzania an overpriced radar system, is revealed in the US embassy cables.

The University of Cambridge's Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CGHR, www?.?polis?.?cam?.?ac?.?uk/cghr) is seeking to appoint a post-doctoral Research Associate to work for up to 22 months on our new research project ‘New communication technologies and citizen-led governance in Africa’, funded by the Cairns Family Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust.

Fahamu’s Refugee Programme is pleased to announce the January issue of the [1.1 MB pdf], a monthly publication that aims to provide a forum for providers of refugee legal aid. With a focus on the global South, it aims to serve the needs of legal aid providers as well as raise awareness of refugee concerns among the wider readership of Pambazuka News.

This issue contains articles on:
- UK age assessment: a new approach
- Towards a legal asylum system in Jordan
- Witchcraft allegations and refugee protection
- UNHCR's role in Israel-Sudan returns
- Transgendered women allowed to remain in the US
- South Africa to return Zimbabweans in 2011.

An exciting new community radio project is helping communities in Ghana to share valuable experiences of adaptation with other villages and towns, as well as local decision-makers. Researchers can also hear directly from these communities, giving an unprecedented picture of what women, men and children are already doing in their daily lives to adapt to a changing climate.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor has named three Kenyan cabinet ministers and a former police chief among six suspects behind the east African country's post-election violence in 2008. The widely awaited announcement has the potential to destabilise Kenya's fragile coalition, or unity government, which was formed by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to end the bloodshed and restore stability. Prominent among the six suspects were finance minister and deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya's founding father Jomo Kenyatta, and William Ruto, the higher education minister who has been suspended to fight a corruption case.

A group of civil society organisations have raised concerns about the adverse impacts of BHP Billiton’s ongoing negotiations with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for a $5 billion aluminum smelter near the port of Banana on the Atlantic Coast to be powered by the proposed Inga 3 hydropower scheme. 'In one of the world’s poorest and most corrupt countries, this purely commercial venture is set to reinforce existing poverty. Without due action, it will cost the Congolese people electricity, jobs and development,' say the organisations.

In an event on sexual orientation at UN Headquarters in New York, held in conjunction with Human Rights Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored discrimination against homosexuals and the violence of which they are often victims, for which the perpetrators escape punishment. Ban recognised that social attitudes run deep and social change often comes only with time, but he highlighted the collective responsibility to stand against discrimination, to defend fellow human beings and fundamental principles. Ban noted that during his recent trips to Africa, he urged leaders to do away with laws criminalising homosexuality.

Delegations from Morocco and the Frente Polisario have attended a fourth round of informal talks in New York on ending the conflict in Western Sahara at the invitation of the personal envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General. The three-day meeting in Long Island, convened by the envoy, Christopher Ross, was also attended delegates from the neighbouring States, Algeria and Mauritania. The proposals of the two parties were again presented, but by the end of the meeting, each party continued to reject the proposal of the other as a sole basis for future negotiations, the statement added.

The two Islamist groups fighting the weak UN-backed Somali government, al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, are to merge, according to reports. The two had been allies but have fallen out over the past year, with Hizbul Islam losing ground. Some see the merger as a takeover by al-Shabab, which has links to al-Qaeda.

Documents found in Lamu have exposed the understated role of Kenyan Asians in the struggle for independence, reports the Daily Nation. The files also shed light on the real reasons behind the detention of Jomo Kenyatta and fellow freedom fighters. 'The files are a real treasure as they explain in detail how the detainees were treated,' says Athman Hussein, the National Museums of Kenya, assistant director in charge of Coast region.

Ghana and Qatar’s announcement that they will jointly farm 50,000 hectares of land is the latest in a sweeping, but controversial, trend rolling across Africa. Cash-rich countries are securing land in poorer states, which they hope will provide them with food security. But critics warn that in the rush to secure food for themselves, investors and African governments risk alienating large sectors of the populations, for whom land ownership is an ongoing, emotional issue.

Government, donors and Members of Parliament have been challenged to make decisions that will enable Tanzanians achieve better results from their tax and donor money. In a new policy brief, Uwazi at Twaweza presses for a more transparent budget process; implementation of the recommendations of the Controller and Auditor General (CAG), and a focus on learning in primary schools. The brief titled, 'Achieving Results: Four Challenges to Government, Donors and MPs', says effective management of public resources remains elusive because the budget process is opaque, and citizens and oversight bodies lack a substantive voice in it. It notes further that efforts to improve primary education have disproportionately focused on increasing enrolment, failing to ensure that children actually learn while in school.

Egypt was offered nuclear weapons, material and expertise on the black market after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to a senior Egyptian diplomat. President Hosni Mubarak turned down the offer, but the incident raises new questions over what nuclear sales were made by the other states or groups in the chaos of the early 1990s in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Maged Abdelaziz, the country’s ambassador to the UN, made the revelation to America’s top negotiator on nuclear arms control, Rose Gottemoeller, in a conversation reported in a leaked US cable in May last year.

Guest editor David Anderson Hooker, Director of Research and Training for Coming to the Table: Taking America (USA) Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement, and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, invite submissions for the first issue of its fifth volume, entitled ‘500 Years Later: Reverberations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.’

The arrest of more than 60 Sudanese women's rights activists on 14 December 2010, for peacefully protesting the lashing of a woman by police shows the urgent need to reform Sudan's public order laws and practices, Human Rights Watch has said. The system imposes illegitimate restrictions on a range of personal behavior and public expression and disproportionately targets women, Human Rights Watch said. The lashing case, in a public place in Omdurman in November, garnered public attention as it was captured on a video clip, widely circulated on the internet and in the media. Visit this link to read more and to watch the video.