Human rights groups accused Angola on Wednesday of intimidating their activists ahead of elections next year and urged the European Union to press the African country to stop the harassment. Amnesty International, Global Witness and other NGOs said a firm EU response was needed to ensure groups could continue their work in preparation for the elections.

At least 65 people have been killed in renewed tribal clashes in Sudan's Darfur, a tribal leader said on Thursday, two days after the United Nations approved a massive peacekeeping force for the war-wracked region. The fighting, in which another 25 people were wounded, took place in Southern Darfur on Tuesday and raised the toll from two days of clashes between the Rzigat Aballa tribe and the Torjam to at least 140 dead.

Sierra Leone's United Nations-backed Special Court convicted two former leaders of a pro-government militia on Thursday for war crimes, but acquitted them of some of the most serious charges of crimes against humanity. The two were leaders of the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), which fought for President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in a 1991 to 2002 civil war. Kabbah is due to stand down after August 11 elections in which his deputy is standing as his chosen successor.

A train crash in a remote part of Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 100 people and injured more than 200, the central African country's minister of information said on Thursday. "We are still discovering the dead. So right now we are putting the death toll at about 100," Toussaint Tshilombo told Reuters, adding that the cause of the crash was still unknown.

Darfur rebel factions began arriving in Tanzania on Friday for U.N.-AU sponsored negotiations aimed at reconciling their differences ahead of peace talks with the Sudanese government. The talks to end the 4-year-old conflict in western Sudan have taken on a new importance since the U.N. Security Council decided on Tuesday to approve the deployment of 26,000 peacekeeping troops and police to stem the bloodshed in Darfur.

Gauteng's biggest refugee centre in Marabastad has turned into a slumland where women are raped every night and where refugees - mainly from Zimbabwe - squat for months hoping to get legal documents. The national assembly's Home Affairs committee paid an impromptu visit to the Home Affairs centre on Wednesday and its chairperson, Patrick Chauke, labelled the situation "inhumane" and a "massive crisis". The smartly dressed MPs were met by hundreds of hungry, haggard looking refugees pushing and shoving to get into the building.

The growing number of Zimbabweans flooding into South Africa has clearly become a serious problem for the government of President Thabo Mbeki, yet officials there continue to deny there is a problem next door in Zimbabwe. SABC news reported on Thursday that the department of home affairs said “Zimbabweans streaming into South Africa cannot be classified as refugees, as they are not facing persecution in their home country.”

Eight opposition activists were arrested in Mutare on Thursday for allegedly singing political songs that denounced and denigrated Robert Mugabe. Pishai Muchauraya, the MDC spokesperson for the Tsvangirai MDC, said one of the activists, Llyod Mahute the provincial youth secretary, was severely beaten by a Chief Inspector Innocent Rigomeka of Chisamba Police Station. He is being held at an unknown police station and the other seven activists are being held at Mutare Central police station. We could not get a comment from the police.

Dramatic new evidence of the attacks on the people of Darfur by Sudanese government troops has emerged in 500 drawings by children who escaped the violence by fleeing across the border to Chad. In a ground-breaking move, the remarkable collection of images will now be submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has started proceedings against a Sudanese government minister and a militia commander accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.

Gunmen have stepped up attacks on aid workers and food convoys in Sudan’s Darfur region, disrupting relief aid to millions of people, according to agencies. Incidents include the harassment of humanitarian workers, abductions and commandeering of vehicles.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has started relocating about 4,000 Somali refugees to a reopened refugee camp at Teferi Ber in eastern Ethiopia. The camp was closed in 2001 after its previous population of Somali refugees were repatriated. Kisut Gebre Egziabher, senior public information assistant at UNHCR, told IRIN that about 2,000 refugees had been moved from an overcrowded camp at Kebribeyah.

The UN refugee agency has launched an appeal for US$48 million to provide badly needed assistance for victims of the renewed conflict inside Somalia. UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists the estimated number of Somalis who will receive assistance from UNHCR under the appeal – newly arrived Somali refugees in neighbouring countries and people displaced inside Somalia – will rise to 478,000 by end 2008 from 312,000 currently.

The European Union has taken the first step towards sending a force to countries neighbouring the Sudanese conflict in Darfur. European foreign ministers in Brussels authorised their military staff to draw up plans for an operation to deploy in Chad and the Central African Republic.

The latest report from the International Crisis Group, A Strategy for Comprehensive Peace in Sudan, examines how the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended Africa’s longest-running civil war in 2005, is being extensively undermined, primarily by the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).

Six senior police officers in Masvingo town are facing demotion after they set free several opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party activists who were arrested during a government crackdown last March. The six, whose names could not be immediately established, will be demoted from the rank of superintendent to inspector with effect from 31 July 2007.

Seventeen MDC activists have now been locked up in remand prison for 114 days (4 months), while over 4 weeks have passed with the High Court failing to make a ruling on a bail application put forward by their lawyers. Alec Muchadehama expressed his frustration Wednesday saying the state was clearly determined to ensure his clients remain in custody. Up until now no trial date has been set with the MDC activists being remanded in custody to 13 August.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the government of Guinea-Bissau to help end the intimidation of journalists covering the trafficking of drugs in the country and to ensure appropriate compensation is paid to the journalists who were victims of a road accident in 2005, following a recent court ruling. "We are very worried for the security of our colleagues in Guinea-Bissau," said Gabriel Baglo, Director of IFJ Africa office.

Despite a thicket of troubles, from deadly illnesses like AIDS and malaria to corrupt politicians and deep-seated poverty, a plurality of Africans say they are better off today than they were five years ago and are optimistic about their future and that of the next generation, according to a poll conducted in 10 sub-Saharan countries by The New York Times and the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

While welcoming the pardoning of 38 opposition politicians and journalists in Ethiopia last week, CIVICUS and the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP ) remind the Ethiopian government that many others, including GCAP coordinators Daniel Bekele and Netsanet Demissie, remain in prison anxiously awaiting their verdict.

Possibly a quarter million people have lost their lives in Darfur, western Sudan, in ethnic conflict. The U.S. government screams its head off in denunciation of genocide, in this case. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as many as five million have died since 1994 in overlapping convulsions of ethnic and state-sponsored massacre. Not a word of reproach from Washington.