Ethiopia is to become one of the first countries in Africa to produce its own drugs to tackle the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis, health officials told IRIN on Tuesday. The country, alongside South Africa, is to receive technological support so that it can manufacture anti-retroviral (ARVs) drugs to treat patients suffering from the virus.

Thousands of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia are to be moved away from the border area which separates the two countries, the UN told IRIN on Thursday. The move follows increasing calls that the refugees, who fled Eritrea during the bitter two-year border war, should be moved from the Wa'ala Nihibi camp - some 20 km from the existing border - for their "protection and emotional safety".

A major resettlement programme for thousands of people is underway in northern Ethiopia, despite a warning that facilities like water and health supplies are not in place. Some 75,000 people are expected to be moved from central Tigray to western areas of the region within the next five months. Several thousand started moving in late February. The aim of the move is to tackle widespread environmental degradation by helping families move to more fertile lands.

For millions of children all over the world going to school, having a decent meal and a clean place to live in are a luxury. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) about 246 million children are involved in child labour. These children are exposed to the worst form of working conditions. They are engaged in work that is hazardous to their health and general well being.

In Amigna Daba, a small rural village in the south-central Ethiopian highlands, girls must overcome distance as well as cultural and religious barriers to education. The village has no services, no safe water, and no roads, or other basic infrastructure. The nearest school is a three-hour walk away. The challenges children face in going to school in rural Ethiopia are hard to imagine. Sixty-four percent of the population in the country lives in absolute poverty. This harsh statistic translates into a weak educational infrastructure, which serves only 57 percent of the total school age population and 47.0 percent of school age girls.

The president of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which borders Eritrea, has warned of local clashes following a recent announcement that the controversial village of Badme is in Eritrea. Tsirgay Berhe, who heads the regional government in Tigray, said the local population might not accept the decision. On Friday, the independent Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) categorically stated that the symbolic village of Badme - where the two countries' border war flared up in 1998 - was in Eritrea. The EEBC rejected attempts by Ethiopia to "vary" the delimited border line, ahead of physical demarcation due to start in July.

The British government announced on Tuesday that it is backing an ecological scheme aimed at protecting Ethiopia’s indigenous plant life.

The Rift Valley area of central Ethiopia is a place of chronic food shortage, especially in recent years as erratic rains have stunted crops, and diseases have killed off livestock. Years of deforestation have eroded the soil, and even the farmers near Ziway Lake struggle to find water for their families and crops. They lacked the equipment to move the water to their farms. But they knew that with some water pumps and pipes, and the technical expertise to maintain the equipment and grow their crops in drought conditions, they could overcome the dry climate.

Abraham Feleke is the only surgeon at his 150-bed hospital south of Addis Ababa, a facility that caters for two million people. Situated some 300 km south of the capital Addis Ababa, Yirga Alem is seen as a flagship medical centre. But even there the facilities are appallingly inadequate. “I feel we are totally undervalued as a profession," says Abraham.

Ethiopia says it has given the US overflight and landing rights in the war against Iraq. Ethiopian television quoted a senior foreign ministry official as saying this was in accordance with requests by the US. He said Ethiopia had no plans to deploy troops.

Two teenagers spelt out the scale of the water crisis in drought-stricken Ethiopia at an international conference in Japan marking world water day on Saturday. Tireza Satheesh and Zerihun Mammo told how they witnessed first hand the suffering of communities in Ethiopia who have almost no access to water.

The human rights group Amnesty International (AI) has called on the African Union (AU) to back plans to boost and protect the rights of women on the continent. The call comes as a high level AU ministerial conference meets in Addis Ababa on Monday to discuss plans for strengthening women’s rights.

This report from Human Rights Watch outlines human rights abuses of teachers, lecturers and students in Ethiopia. The report states that the international community has failed to condemn human rights abuses in Ethiopia for strategic reasons of their own. The report details a number of cases of human rights abuse, including a time line of events and makes recommendations to the Ethiopian government as well as to the international community.

Ethiopia's prime minister has called on the west to reform damaging trade policies and increase development aid to help his country break its 20-year-long cycle of poverty and famine. Warning that millions of Ethiopians still face the threat of starvation because of the slow response to the current famine, Meles Zenawi said his country could run out of food by June.

The Ethiopian government has identified a new camp for Sudanese refugees in the country after over 100 Sudanese were killed in violent ethnic attacks over the last five months.

In a major new report Christian Aid examines the underlying causes of the current food shortage crisis in Ethiopia. 'Nothing to fall back on' says that Ethiopia will remain on the brink of catastrophe unless the root causes of poverty are attacked.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) and UNICEF began a workshop this week to develop innovative strategies and an action plan to promote girls' education in five regions that have wide gender gaps and low girls' school enrolment rates.

An Addis Ababa court has dismissed corruption charges against Abate Kisho, former President of Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region and Ato Bitew Belay- former TPLF (Tigray People's Liberation Front- main partner of ruling coalition) Central Committee member and a dissident.

Vendors of Ethiopian free press publications are being hunted down and detained, and their newspapers are being snatched from them by police, says the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association (EFJA). This comes at a time when local and foreign journalists, publishers and media professionals have strongly protested against the new draft press law that have been made public by the Ministry of Information.

ARTICLE 19 has released a report on the current legal framework for freedom of expression in Ethiopia. ARTICLE 19 believes that the report will inform the ongoing dialogue in Ethiopia on the new draft press law. The Report presents an independent assessment of the current legal framework for freedom of expression in Ethiopia and identifies the key areas of concern in relation to freedom of expression.