Thirty-eight people in the Republic of Congo have died in a suspected outbreak of the deadly ebola virus, the country's health ministry said late on Tuesday.

The United Nations has denounced the widespread recruitment of child soldiers by Thomas Lubanga's Union des patriotes congolais pour la reconciliation et la paix (UPC/RP), a largely Hema ethnic militia based in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) city of Bunia.

A military observer team should be deployed in Mambasa, near the Ituri river in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a United Nations-led inter-agency rapid assessment mission organised by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has recommended.

A tornado tore through remote villages in central Congo, killing 164 people, destroying homes and ruining crops, the country's top health official said Wednesday.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has expressed concern about the arbitrary detention of journalist Kadima Mukombe. The Radio Kilimandjaro host has been detained at the Tshikapa central prison, in the country's southern region, for the past month.

The UN Mission (MONUC) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Saturday reported having received "alarming" information regarding troop movements on the part of the Kinshasa government, the Kigali government, the Kampala government, and various armed factions in eastern DRC, and warned of "imminent" attacks.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reunited 140 children with their families in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in a two-day operation last week. "All the children were reunited with their families, from whom they had been separated for several months - or several years in some cases - owing to the conflict," the ICRC reported on 30 January.

The Research on Knowledge Systems (RoKS) exploratory initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is launching its second annual research competition (2002-2003). This year's theme: "Strengthening Knowledge Policy for Small States: How can small states participate more effectively in local, regional, and global knowledge partnerships?" requests concept notes. The competition will award up to seven grants, with a maximum value of CAD$ 80,000 each. For joint proposals where researchers are located in two or more countries a maximum of CAD$ 160,000 will be awarded.

Despite a 2002 power-sharing agreement between Congolese parties, serious fighting continues in Eastern Congo, particularly Kivu and Ituri Provinces, where the population is suffering enormously under an almost complete absence of international attention. Unless peace-building processes are crafted specifically for the East and made central to the transitional government’s program, the headlined political agreements and other peace accords that have been brokered will remain never implemented words on paper says a report from the International Crisis Group, which warns against Congolese elections until serious progress is made in the peace process.

Commending the Congo for its frank acknowledgement of serious obstacles to gender equality, expert members of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women also stressed the need for the Government to take concrete measures to eradicate the deeply entrenched traditional practices and customary laws that continued to subject women to unfair treatment.

An inter-agency mission will begin a two-week tour on Monday to assess the situation of internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with a view to devising strategic plans to overcome the country-wide problem, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

An animal rights group has appealed to the Congolese authorities to revise the existing endangered species law to include marine turtles among the country's protected animals. ''Despite the benefits that sea turtles bring, they are being massacred by coastal residents for food or for economic reasons,'' says Alexis Mayet, president of the Congolese Educational Association for the Environment and Nature, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), with the French acronym ACEN.

As a major UN investigation confirmed the commission of widespread atrocities against Twa 'pygmy' communities in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) called for neighbouring states and the UN Security Council to take urgent diplomatic and humanitarian action to protect Twa and other communities from violations including mass rape, kidnapping, executions and cannibalism carried out against them by rebel factions.

A prominent human rights activist imprisoned for the past nine months in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been on a hunger strike for one week in protest against the lack of medical care being made available to him.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Health Minister Mashako Mamba told IRIN on Tuesday that "more than" 2,000 people had died as the result of an influenza epidemic that had been sweeping across parts of the country for one-and-a-half months.

The International Human Rights Law Group is a non-profit organisation of human rights and legal professionals and activists engaged in advocacy, training and litigation around the world. The Law Group's mission is to empower human rights advocates and defenders at the national level to expand the scope of human rights protection for men and women, and to promote broad participation in building human rights standards at the national, regional and international levels.

The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, whose forces have been accused of cannibalism, rape and massacres, ensure an immediate halt to human rights violations in eastern Congo. The council statement was issued shortly after a U.N. investigation confirmed a horrifying campaign of atrocities against civilians in the forests of northeast Congo, with children among the victims.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello has appealed for the speedy implementation of the power-sharing accord signed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on 17 December 2002. "My principal concern on this voyage is the putting into place of the accord," he told IRIN in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, on Tuesday.

The Mouvement de liberation du Congo rebel group (MLC) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has arrested five of its soldiers accused of committing human rights violations in Ituri District, in the northeast of the country. Ituri has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent weeks between the MLC and its ally, the Rassemblement congolais pour la Democratie-National (RCD-N), against the RCD-Kisangani-Mouvement de liberation.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) is urging activists to write to the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo urging them to repeal the sentences of those found guilty and sentenced to death for taking part in the assassination of former President Laurent-Désirée Kabila. OMCT is also advocating an amnesty for political crimes and a guarantee that human rights will be respected in the country.