The World Bank has joined the push to make 2010 a conflict-free year for the African continent, Bank President Robert Zoellick, has said here.'We recognize the pioneering role African regional organizations have played in managing conflict across the continent and we can learn from them,' said Zoellick, who led America's trade diplomacy before moving to the World Bank as President.

A UN report sys the number of people in southern Sudan in need of food quadrupled during the past year. "The conflicts and drought have increased the number of southerners in need of food aid from 1 million in 2009 to 4.3 million at the beginning of 2010," the report released by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) on Wednesday, said.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister (PM) Morgan Tsvangirai are locked in a fresh power struggle after the former instructed government ministers to report to his two vice-presidents by-passing the Premier – a clear breach of the former foes' power-sharing agreement.

When people buy diamond jewellery, they often want to convey love or commitment to someone dear and special. But, this jewellery, if it contains diamonds from the Marange diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe, could have a bloody past signifying mistreatment and abuse.

The United Nations refugee agency has reported that a sharp rise in violence in Somalia in January left nearly 260 civilians dead, in addition to uprooting over 80,000 and causing widespread destruction. According to local sources, intense clashes between Government forces and militia groups fighting in the strife-torn central regions have also left 253 civilians wounded.

Two Ugandan journalists with the Daily Monitor newspaper - Henry Ochieng, editor and Angelo Izama, a staff writer - were yesterday charged with criminal libel at the Makindye Chief Magistrates Court over an article the State claims defamed President Museveni.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given a grant of $7 million over five years to the American Cancer Society to lead and coordinate the African Tobacco Control Consortium, a global coalition of public health-oriented organizations focusing on using evidence-based approaches to stem the tobacco epidemic in Africa.

On September 19-25, 2010, a festival and conference promoting peace and conflict resolution will be held in Nairobi, Kenya. A two-day conference will be accompanied by seven days of artistic performances featuring traditional and popular music, oral narrative, and drama. Organized by the Drum Café, the event seeks to bring together practitioners and researchers working in areas related to the arts and/or conflict resolution in and out of Kenya.

Twenty kids, five weddings (and more to come?) and a whole lot of polygamous loving going on, marital and extra-marital. Some say it is a private matter, but like it or not, just as with any celebrity, Zuma’s sexual behaviour is not private.

Berlin, Germany. Lusaka, Zambia. How have mobile phones, the Internet and computers changed people's lives on the African continent? To find out, eLearning Africa has launched an online photography contest. The organisers are inviting people from Africa to submit images that show how they live, learn and work with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

UNICEF and the Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) at The New School will host an international conference on adolescent girls in April 2010. With an emphasis on reviewing existing evidence and policies, the conference will focus on the role and potential agency of adolescent girls in meeting emerging global challenges.

The Egyptian government has announced that it would be sending a committee to assess farmland in Uganda to grow wheat to then import back into Egypt. Egypt is the leader in wheat consumption and has historically relied mostly on imports. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Egypt consumes 14 million tons of wheat a year but is only able to produce 8 million tons.

The African Union Commission Chief Jean Ping, has informed Eritrea to send an ambassador to represent it in Addis Ababa, the seat of the African Union (AU), despite Eritrea's frosty relations with hosts, Ethiopia.

Employees of the African Union (AU) have demanded that the new AU Chairperson should address outstanding demands for benefit and security. The staff urged the new AU Chair, Malawian President Bingu Wa Mutharika, who would be presiding over the 53-member continental organization for the next 12 months, to make sure that they would be beneficiaries of attractive benefit packages.

A Ghana High Court, sitting in Accra, has dropped a four-year-old defamation suit brought against 'Akosua', a cartoonist with the privately-owned Accra-based Daily Guide newspaper.

Zimbabwe may have to import over half the maize it needs this year to cover a deficit after drought has destroyed crops and left the country facing a severe food shortage, a farmers' group has said. The former regional bread basket has relied on food aid and imports since 2001, after President Robert Mugabe's government seized commercial farms from whites to resettle landless blacks, most of whom were poorly equipped and underfunded.

The Obama administration should adopt recommendations in a report issued to help stop the flow of stolen money into the United States, Human Rights Watch said.

Dozens of African leaders met in Ethiopia to tackle the challenges facing the continent in the effort to meet the United Nations target of ensuring universal access to malaria control measures by the end of this year. Some 26 heads of State convened the first working session of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) during the annual African Union (AU) summit, which got under way in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) is demanding the arrest of a security guard from the University of Zimbabwe, after a student leader was ‘severely’ beaten in a crackdown by police and security guards on a public students meeting.

Researchers have reported results of a clinical trial showing that a new vaccine - Mycobacterium vaccae (MV) - is effective in preventing tuberculosis in people with HIV infection. The DarDar Health Study, named for Dartmouth and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, found that MV immunization reduced the rate of definite tuberculosis by 39 percent among 2,000 HIV-infected patients in Tanzania.