Burundian security forces have arrested an opposition official and his wife, his party said. Deo Nshimirimana, a former lawmaker and a Union for Peace and Development (UPD) party official was detained alongside his wife and a businessman. A security official who asked not to be named said the UPD official and even the party are linked to a terrorist group bent on destabilising Burundi, according to AFP.

Aid organisations say a small handheld computer will allow them to more rapidly assess where food aid is needed most urgently. As a result, fewer Burundians will suffer hunger this year.

Several mysterious killings in Burundi, where memories of civil war are still fresh, have spread fear and disrupted livelihoods, while authorities have sought to play down talk of renewed armed insurrection, blaming some of the deaths on bandits. Tension has been mounting in Burundi since several elections were held earlier this year. The presidential poll was boycotted by most of the opposition amid claims of fraud in the local polls.

The Mutambara Peace Village is a unique effort to reconcile Hutus and Tutsis by giving them homes to live together in the same village. Today, some 1,600 Hutus and Tutsis live as neighbours in 300 identical two-room homes constructed of concrete with tin roofs.

The political climate is growing increasingly antagonistic in Burundi, where many of today’s political parties were yesterday’s rebel groups. A spate of elections designed to entrench stability through pluralism has only made matters worse, say analysts, raising fears that a 10-year-old power-sharing deal is falling apart.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called for immediate and unconditional release of Thierry Ndayishimiye, Director and Publisher of the private weekly magazine Arc-en-ciel, who was arrested on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 and detained at the central prison of Mpimba in Bujumbura, capital of Burundi. “It is unacceptable to imprison a journalist for slander which in this case is not even proven”, said Gabriel Baglo, Director of IFJ Africa Office. “After the cas of Kavumbagu who is awaiting life imprisonment, this arrest manifestly shows the authorities are determined to muzzle the media in Burundi”.

Burundi is east Africa's most corrupt nation according to an anti-graft watchdog, while Kenya, which usually tops Transparency International's (TI) annual list of graft-prone countries in the region, was third. Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda were included in the East African Bribery Index survey 2010, commissioned by TI-Kenya for the first time this year.

Agathon Rwasa, the leader of Burundi's main opposition party, has said he has gone into hiding after learning that the government wanted to arrest him on charges that he planned to mount a new insurgency. In a tape recording sent to media agencies on Wednesday, Rwasa, a former rebel leader, said that he had also been threatened for rejecting the results of last month's district elections.

As the people of the small African nation of Burundi get set to cast their votes in Monday’s presidential election, an independent United Nations expert today warned of potential violence and human rights violations, citing a number of recent worrisome developments.

Allegations of massive fraud during May’s local elections in Burundi have cast a shadow over the country's democratic transition, prompting international calls for compromise rather than confrontation. Attributing the ruling CNDD-FDD’s landslide victory to ballot-box stuffing, vote-buying with state resources, the illegal use of proxies and a lack of secrecy in some polling stations, 13 opposition parties have announced a boycott of the 28 June presidential race, leaving President Pierre Nkurunziza as the only runner.

Religious leaders and organisations have greatly fuelled homophobia in Burundi. These are the findings of a report titled Religion and homophobia, released recently by the Movement for Individual Freedoms (MOLI), a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) organisation in Burundi.

The first in a series of elections has brought simmering discontent with Burundi's electoral commission to the boil. Just over a week after the May 24 communal elections, five opposition presidential candidates have demanded the resignation of members of the National Electoral Commission and announced that they will boycott the presidential poll scheduled for June 28.

Five opposition candidates have withdrawn from presidential polls in Burundi due to take place on 28 June. They include the former rebel leader Agathon Rwasa, who was widely thought to be the key challenger to the current President Pierre Nkurunziza. All had called for the resignation of Burundi's electoral commission following local polls last month, which they say were fraudulent.

Burundi's opposition have demanded a re-run of local polls it said were rigged by the regime while the country's top former rebel threatened a boycott of crucial upcoming elections. The allegation of fraud in Monday's local council polls -- the first phase of a months-long electoral marathon -- was likely to heighten fears over the stability of the small war-scarred central African nation.

Burundi's district elections, seen as a test of the tiny African country's stability ahead of presidential elections in June, met international standards, European observers said on Thursday. Monday's elections were the first of a series of polls in which the coffee-producer will also vote for representatives to parliament and its next president. District polls are often an indicator of how the rest of the vote will go.

Human Rights Watch has expressed disappointment at the Burundian government's decision to withdraw the work authorization of Neela Ghoshal, Human Rights Watch's researcher in Burundi. The government made its decision following Human Rights Watch's publication of a report last week on pre-election violence in the country.

On May 21, Burundi begins a four-month election season , the country's first elections following the end of a nearly 16-year civil war in 2009. Five distinct elections—municipal (communal), presidential, parliamentary, senatorial and local (collinaire) —are slated to take place by September 7, with the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie-Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie, CNDD-FDD) seeking to maintain its hold on power.

The French government has provided financial assistance to the tune of 90,000 euros to Burundi for the organisation of the series of elections planned in the coming four months, an official source said in Bujumbura.

Just 2km from the Tanzanian border, the “integrated” rural village of Nyakazi in Kibago commune, Makamba Province, houses 198 families, 80 percent of whom are landless returnees. The village is one of several set up in the southern region of Burundi to help in the reintegration of thousands of 1972 civil war returnees.

Burundian police and administrative officials must take stronger measures to prevent and punish pre-election violence, Human Rights Watch said today. Members of various political parties, especially their affiliated youth movements, have clashed on a number of occasions since November 2009. In most cases, police have not conducted thorough investigations and no one has been held accountable.