An armed group in Nigeria's delta region said it will resume attacks on oil installations and other facilities after Britain pledged help in tackling unrest in the south. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said on Thursday that the two-week-old ceasefire will end at midnight (23:00 GMT) on Saturday.

Sudan on Thursday rejected a deal with the International Criminal Court to hand over two indicted officials in exchange for dropping the court's arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo however ruled out dropping his call for a warrant for Bashir on suspicion of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, a move that some powers fear could derail peace efforts there.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has agreed to restore diplomatic ties with neighbouring Chad, broken off in May after a rebel attack on the Sudanese capital Khartoum, mediator Senegal said on Friday.

The authorities of the South African province Gauteng expect the camps for displaced refugees affected by xenophobic violence to be empty by next month, but no one seems to know what will happen to the people afterwards.

International Law must be delivered with the right procedures and indubitable evidences if it has to be credited as objective justice. This Law of Nations must not be biased with politics of selfish competition in the international and global interests. This Law must always be the servant of security, stability, order and peace and not vice versa, writes James Okuk.

Monday’s request by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for an arrest warrant charging President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan with crimes against humanity and genocide is generating enormous debate and controversy. Diplomats express increasing concern that the arrest warrant will endanger the work of humanitarian organizations and peacekeepers in Sudan.

Xenophobia, refugees and immigration politics in their own right have negative connotations when examined through the lens of universal values, moral truths or scriptural teachings which form the basis of our humanitarian civilization, but when translated and practiced through the lens of racism, religious chauvinism, cultural and ethnic ‘otherness,’ the consequence can be horrendous and catastrophic.

Matthew J Gibney (2004) examines the emergence of Xenophobia, Refugees and Immigration politics in liberal democracies and its response to the ‘crisis’ as framed by these states. Gibney cites the earlier work of Hannah Arendt, her sustained critique of Europe’s creation of nation states, thus depriving ‘ethnics communities’ of citizenship rights and ‘manufacturing’ them as ‘outcasts’ in their own societies. In so doing it established the fragmentation of peoples , thereby indelibly etching into modern civic politics, the concept of ‘otherness.’ Thus it also adds another hue to the many shades of ‘identity’ to the ‘rainbow of whitism’

In Africa, however, cultural, genocidal and hegemonic racism, has been and still is one of the primary social evil of our times, moreover so, systematically infecting caste, class and linguistic dissonance for over 500 years. More concretely racism has through its imperial, colonial and apartheid processes de-socialized and pathologized whole generations of ‘non-white’ peoples. The historical damage to the continent continues to be immeasurable. But all this has been the strategies of whitism – imperialism, colonialism and now globalization. The ‘white church, military, law and education’ have been the chemistry of this ‘culture of otherness’ and the hallmark of Globalism. The 5% of the world whose philosophy has been ‘manifest destiny’ own over 80% of the world’s wealth and power and are the gatekeepers of this super-state system.

A pregnant Congolese woman was beaten by private security guards hired by the eThekwini municipality on Thursday evening as foreign nationals displaced by xenophobia staged a sit-in on the steps of Durban's City Hall.

Metro Police on Firday arrested and forcibly removed more than 190 foreign refugees who had camped at the back entrance of Durban City Hall for two days. The group, which was made up predominantly of children with their mothers, had been trying to get some sort of assistance from the council but after a last warning to disperse, some began handing themselves over to police. Others were forcibly removed and all were taken away in Metro Police vans.

Somewhere in the dark in Albert Park are about 120 refugees, mostly women and young children. These are not young jobseekers from Mozambique and Malawi, doing the African renaissance equivalent of a post-degree work holiday in London. These are documented refugees from the worst civil war of the last decade - a war that has already claimed 4 million lives. A war, as Human Rights Watch has already documented, funded in part by South African mining companies paying warlords in the Congo for the right to plunder the local mineral wealth.

The UN refugee agency said on Friday it was concerned that people fleeing political violence in Zimbabwe were not being properly screened at the South Africa border, raising fears that people with a genuine fear of persecution could be deported.

South Sudan's army said on Saturday it had finished pulling out of the oil-rich Abyei area where southern troops clashed with Khartoum's forces in May, but accused the northern army of foot-dragging on its own pullout.

Aid agencies in Sudan have been tightening security and preparing for a violent backlash if, as expected, the International Criminal Court indicts Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity on Monday.

Niger Delta Militant group has threatened to end its two weeks cease fire on Saturday midnight in the region following a statement made by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the just concluded G8 summit in Japan that he would end violence in the region.

Cameroon has blocked all exportation of foodstuff to Equatorial Guinea and closed all its borders with neighbours following a directive by the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Marafa Hamidou Yaya. Security officials say it's a security measure.

Led by President Isaias Afewerki since gaining independence from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, Eritrea has, by some indicators, one of the worst human rights records in the world. The organisation Reporters Without Borders (known by its French acronym RSF), for example, has documented how dozens of journalists have been detained incommunicado since 2001, with several of those believed to have died in custody. According to RSF's latest annual report, Eritrea "deserves to be at the bottom" of a league table for press freedom.

On Thursday the 3rd of July the Supreme Court of Uganda finally heard the constitutional appeal concerning the imposition of the death penalty in Uganda, three years after the constitutional court gave its original judgement on the case.

A senior member of a Darfur rebel group accused of taking part in an attack on a city near Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, has appeared in court.nAbdul Aziz Ashur, brother-in-law of Khalil Ibrahim, the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem), appeared in North Khartoum court on Thursday with seven other suspects .

The death toll from fighting between Somali anti-government fighters and Ethiopian and Ugandan forces, has risen to 53 people, according to a human rights organisation. The increased toll was reported on Wednesday by Ahmed Sudan, chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights organisation.

Chad's security forces have claimed to have killed more than 60 people loyal to a Muslim spiritual leader in clashes in the town of Kouno, around 300km south east of the capital Ndjamena. Government soldiers fought with the followers of Ahmat Ismael Bichara, a "marabout" or holy man, who had allegedly threatened a "holy war" in the country.