Zimbabwe held a secret auction of diamonds from its Marange fields, where the army has been accused of forced labour and torture, an official said on Tuesday. 'Yes, the sales were carried out this weekend,' said Secretary for Mines Thankful Musukutwa, as reported in the Mail & Guardian.

The recent Mozambican food and fuel riots raise the spectre of food insecurity and social unrest in the future, writes Saliem Fakir. 'We certainly have the capability to feed all of the world’s population, but the political economy of agriculture, food production and distribution somewhat has a greater influence as to whether people can feed themselves or not.'

Campaigners for increased health financing have welcomed the commitment by African Union member states to direct more resources to health. But the needs of the continent seem to dwarf available budgets. Africa, is home to 12 per cent of the world’s population, yet accounts for 22 per cent of the total global disease burden.

Contrary to the claim by Times magazine that the war on drugs, the longest war that has cost American taxpayers $2.5 trillion over 40 years, has ‘no clear enemy’,[1] the NAACP in 2010 rightly condemned the war on drugs as a racist war against African Americans and against the poor generally.[2] Californian voters have also proposed the legalization of marijuana to avoid the unnecessary criminalization of otherwise law-abiding responsible adults, aid the sick who need the drug and create fair employment opportunities and wealth for the people and tax revenues for the state.[3]

Reporters Without Borders has expressed shock at the death of Alberto Chakusanga, the host of a programme on a radio station critical of the government. The first journalist to be murdered in Angola since 2001, he was found dead in the kitchen of his home in the Luanda district of Viana at dawn on 5 September.

Record sums were invested last year in coal power - the most carbon intensive form of energy on the planet - by the World Bank, despite international commitments to slash the carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

Only 46,722 people, approximately a third of the number of the disabled in Angola, receive assistance from the National Association of the Disabled (ANDA), according to the Angolan News Agency (ANGOP). More than 150,000 disabled persons are registered in Angola, but this figure is unreliable as the national census had overlooked areas in the country with large numbers of disabled people.

IkamvaYouth has been working on IkamvaYouth-in-a-box which aims to translate the experiences that many Ikamvanites have collected over the years into an information pack. This super high tech system will enable information to be stored in a central database that will make all the information accessible to those who need it.

Friends of the Earth International says it is outraged by reports that a major UN investigation into Nigerian oil spills funded by oil giant Shell relies more on figures produced by oil companies and Nigerian state statistics than on community testimony and organisations on the ground who work with communities.

Figures from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) presented this week revealing a reduction in the world's number of hungry people in 2010 for the first time in 15 years should be a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, the fall is down to short-term improvements in the global economic climate, rather than real, lasting progress in the fight against empty stomachs, says this article.

We took this opportunity of September 7th, 2010, marked by the meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the recent case of mass rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to denounce this war of low intensity imposed on the Congolese populations in the East of their country. The femicide, rape, atrocities, and degrading and despicable human insecurity and fear now characterize the climate of life of people in Ituri, North and South Kivu and across the DR Congo; in a strategy and complicity to balkanize the country.

The UK government has come under fire for delivering 75 per cent of its climate finance for developing countries as loans, which the World Development Movement warns threatens to reverse decades of hard-fought progress on debt relief. Rich countries claimed a key success of the Copenhagen Accord was the announcement of $30 billion of new climate finance to developing countries. But UN Adaptation Fund, set up specifically to manage climate finance, has received just one per cent of money committed so far by donors.

Poor diagnostics and weak surveillance are hampering government efforts to stem cholera in Nigeria says a government health worker. The disease is most severe in the north; as of 8 September 781 people have died and 13,000 cases were reported.

UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation have agreed to hold two further clinical trials on a vaginal gel, which shows promise in reducing the risk of HIV. Experts attending a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa last week decided new trials should be conducted as quickly as possible to confirm preliminary hopeful results.

Nigeria had a strong agricultural base before the oil boom, but throughout the years its big farms and plantations have been neglected, says this Global Voices article. As a result, Nigeria has become one of the world's biggest importers of food staples, particularly rice and wheat. Even with these imports though, more than a quarter of Nigerians younger than five suffer from malnutrition.

The Refugee Law Project (RLP), Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, in collaboration with the African Transitional Justice Research Network (ATJRN) has established an Institute for African Transitional Justice (IATJ). The institute is pleased to announce its first short course on African Transitional Justice that will take place in Kampala, Uganda from 21 - 27 November 2010.

Academies (private schools) are reported to be growing in popularity as Kenyan middle class parents shun free primary school education, writes James Shikwati. 'Parents are subliminally communicating to policy makers that they prefer quality over the mere quest to scale up Millennium Developing Goals (MDG) enrolment statistics.'

La Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org), a global peasant movement representing small farmers, landless workers, fisherfolk, rural women, youth and indigenous peoples, with 150 member organizations from 70 countries on five continents, has denounced the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust’s recent acquisition of Monsanto Company shares.

Article 19 has called on the government of Somalia to amend the media law based on proposals by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) and recommendations made by ARTICLE 19 in a legal analysis released on 13 September. Somalia’s 2007 adoption of the Media Law raised serious concerns for media freedom. The law subjects all media to a largely government-controlled regulatory regime.

In an interview with Zahra Moloo, Tony Moturi talks