International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC) has produced two sets of prototype radio programmes about UNSCR 1325 in partnership with community broadcasters in the Philippines and Uganda. The first set was dubbed and broadcast in English and Filipino for an audience in the Philippines and other parts of Asia. The second set was made available in English, Luganda and Swahili for listeners in Uganda and other conflict-affected countries in Africa.

The Assistant Commissioner National Diseases Control in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Alex Apio, has told journalists that the number of discordant couples had increased from 4.8 percent last year to 5 percent, making it even more important that couples should use condoms. Doctors have been researching on circumstances why married couples have different HIV/Aids sero-status.

The supply of free antiretroviral drugs is fast dwindling, raising fears that the people using them might find themselves with no treatment after August, Daily Monitor has learnt. Aids activists say unless something is done urgently, numerous lives will be endangered.

A senior Ugandan delegation is leaving for southern Sudan to start talks with the Ugandan rebel movement, the Lord's Resistance Army. Three previous attempts to negotiate with the rebels, who have fought against the government for two decades, have ended in failure.

Countries in crisis and the wider international community must do much more to support women’s involvement in solving Africa’s deadliest conflicts. Beyond Victimhood: Women’s Peacebuilding in Sudan, Congo and Uganda, the latest Crisis Group report, assesses what women have been able to achieve in those three countries to challenge the dominance of militarised solutions.

Improving security in parts of northern Uganda is encouraging an increasing number of people displaced by conflict to move from camps to villages closer to their original homes where they now cultivate their own fields, a famine early warning agency reported. However, the majority of the nearly two million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the region, mainly children, the elderly and women, remained in camps.

The Innovation Africa Symposium will convene a group of internationally recognised experts on innovation systems to share their latest thinking with agricultural researchers and development partners. The symposium will also provide an opportunity for participants to share their achievements in enhancing innovation processes.

Museveni has been a strong and dominating leader in government, the armed forces and his party for more than 20 years.

But he has never been confident enough to have his way in all matters through the formal structures and channels. So he has always used informal structures to have certain things done which he thought he could not have done formally.

He has never outgrown the methods of work of his guerilla days and even now he remains suspicious of institutional pluralism. Even in institutions where his power is total, informalism is the method of work. Thus during elections, you had a proliferation of the Kakooza Mutale, kakuyege/nyekundiire type of activities, side by side with the formal task forces. You have the Cheeyes in intelligence and journalism; the Tinyefuza role in intelligence side by side with the Security Minister Amama Mbabazi; the Media Centre side by side with the Presidential Advisor on the media and a media spokesman (Onapito) and a Minister responsible for information who is also a spokesman of government.

You have an Inspector General of Police who is also a presidential military assistant. You have a Gen. Tumwine who is a serving military officer, an MP and a Chief Judge (3 in one) of the court martial, the complete negation of the separation of powers.

All these unusual things are not accidental. They inform everyone that what Museveni wants is the law and the norm. It promotes the image of omnipotence which grants him the latitude to do so many things outside the law and to use the structures and the normal channels of government accordingly. Legal niceties or checks and balances are dismissed off hand. So if he gives Shs 20 bn to Basajja, so what? Even if he adds another Shs13.4 bn to him.

If he allocates prime land, with government buildings on, to favoured companies and individuals, so what? That it is Museveni who has done it puts a full stop to any questions. So what if he sends Black Mambas to surround the High Court or boda boda to show his displeasure at judges who passed a “wrong” judgement against government. So what if he sends his opposition opponent to jail and Court Martial on tramped up charges.

So what if creates informal armies, Arrow Boys, Amuka etc… So what if he nullifies the results of elections - Ruremera in Kibaale.

So what if he invades Congo a number of times, makes incursions int the Sudan all without parliamentary approval. So what if creates other kings in Buganda. So what if he abuses religious leaders for not supporting his life presidency project. So what if he aspires to be President of the East African Federation without thinking of the expected requirement of complying with political convergence? Stage by stage he accumulated personal power controlling all appointments and promotions that matter and deciding on the allocation of government revenue.

What all this says is that he always gets his way with anything he wants. This is what is called absolute power, when power goes to the head. He has an infallibility complex. The sovereignty of the country is now resident in the President.

There is absolute concentration of power in the President. Kamuzu Banda put it more succinctly in 1972 when he said that: "Nothing is not my business in this country: everything is my business, everything. The state of education, the state of our economy, the state of our agriculture, the state of our transport, everything is my business."

Thus the multiplicity of offices and ministers goes with their disempowerment since all significant decisions are made in State House. This personalization of power is both cause and effect of the desire for longevity in power. How can the "father" who is responsible for the people's welfare retire? How can he have intermediaries between him and the people? And so on and so forth.

With this background, it becomes clear why disagreeing with him becomes treason. That is why Dr Kizza Besigye is considered to have gone too far. Not only did he disagree with him, but he dared to stand against him. Preposterous is it not?

He must be punished and severely too so that others may see what befalls those who disagree with him. That is the same with Brig Henry Tumukunde. That is why that "fellow" Ruzindana is a traitor as well. How dare he oppose the coveted life presidency and then compound it by not giving way when the President's wife expressed a desire to be an MP? What impudence, he is a traitor. Shun him.

Prof Ali Mazrui has an explanation for this traitor business. Writing on " Political Leadership in Africa: Seven Styles and Four Traditions" he had the following to say about the " monarchical tendency" (Sabagabe): "Even African societies which were not themselves monarchical were influenced by the royal paradigm. Kwame Nkrumah attempted to create a monarchical tradition in independent Ghana by declaring himself life president, by sacralising (making sacred) his authority with the title Osagyefo (Redeemer), by surrounding himself with a class of ostentatious consumers passing themselves as Ghana's new political aristocracy, and by increasingly regarding political opposition to the president as the equivalent of treason (a monarchical version of intolerance)".

In Uganda, the new political aristocracy with its ostentatious consumption is a fact of daily life. The labeling of political opponents as traitors comes from the Sabagabe himself. Intolerance is the order of the day. The "father" has graduated to king. What then is the status and fate of the Kabaka with his quest for Federo, another power centre?

Magnanimity also goes with absolute power. Thus those who have disagreed with him but later repented or recanted may be rehabilitated but at the expense of losing their standing in society. Museveni gives and Museveni takes away.

Historical precedents abound, but Mobutu's on-again, off-again relationship with Nguza Karl-I-Bond and Etienne Tshisekedi, in which the two men were brought back from disgrace and even prison, to occupy high level positions in Mobutu's Cabinet will do for now.

Meanwhile everyone fawns on him as wisdom incarnate. The diplomatic community makes faint polite protests and acquiesces and finances the goings on, on the pretext that there is no one else available.

"Who else" is the refrain. Civil society organizations busy themselves with innocuous causes; the academia gets co-opted; the urban populations grumble silently; and the peasants continue dancing at public events for visiting dignitaries. Everybody goes into hiding. Impunity prevails. National numbness and paralysis are mistaken for stability. This could be a prelude to a gathering storm.

The author is FDC Deputy Secretary General for Policy, Research and former Ruhaama MP.

With more than 300,000 IDPs in Kitgum district alone, living conditions in the camps are crowded and degrading. Huts are spaced only a few meters apart, and there are inevitably five or more people living in each small shelter. Women wait in line for hours at boreholes and often end up with less water than is required by minimum sanitation standards. But the situation is improving.

The Government has started a programme of teaching lower primary children using local languages. It is being tried out in Nakasongola, Kasese, Kabarole and Iganga districts. In Nakasongola it is being tested in 25 primary schools. "The project is intended to explore ways of enhancing literacy, numeracy and life skills of the children," said Samuel Enyutu, the deputy principal outreach Nakaseke Core Primary Teachers' College.

Uganda plans to spend US$10 million to resettle internally displaced persons in northern Uganda, where a 20-year war against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has forced almost two million people out of their homes.

Like most of the female residents of Awere Internally Displaced Persons camp in northern Uganda, the girls rose at dawn that morning in 2002. They set out on foot, with their mother, to harvest crops several kilometers away. The two sisters, both teens, had called the camp home for most their lives. Along with about a million and a half of their neighbors, they were moved from their village to the camp by the Ugandan government in the mid-1990s to protect them from a murderous rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army.

Located at the Congo-Uganda border 500 kilometres south west of Kampala, the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) Bwindi Impenetrable National Park telecentre - a combination of conservation and technology, is making a whole lot of a difference to the endangered mountain gorillas, eco-tourists, tourist stakeholders and locals who live in and around the park. The telecentre has been nominated as one of the 14 finalists in the "environment" category in the world's best Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects that competed in the Stockholm Challenge 2006.

Efforts by authorities in southern Sudan to mediate in the conflict between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) appeared to be stalling at the weekend after Kampala refused to meet the insurgency's leadership because it had been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled that two journalists are to go on trial in Uganda, charged with "promoting sectarianism" in an article criticizing government persecution of opposition leader Kizza Besigye. Editor James Tumusiime and reporter Semujju Ibrahim Nganda of the independent Weekly Observer face up to five years in jail if convicted.

This course handbook was produced to accompany the Uganda Radio Network Advanced Radio Journalism Course, which was run throughout Uganda for freelance radio journalists. The Handbook, which follows the day-by-day course programme, contains transcripts of PowerPoint presentations plus additional supporting material.

Power shortages have hurt Uganda's economy severely and a plan to recycle garbage to produce power is being investigated, said an official. Businesses see the new initiative as a possible sign of relief after experiencing huge financial losses due to power load shedding. The Kampala City Town Clerk, James Ssegane, said government wants to recycle garbage in the city to generate power as an alternative to hydropower in Uganda.

The World Bank announced last week that it had approved a US$30 milllion loan to support scientific development in Uganda. The money will help increase the number and quality of scientists produced by Uganda's universities and research centres, and boost the country's scientific and technological productivity in industrial, agricultural and other sectors, according to SciDev.

Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) on behalf of the Eastern Africa Gender Budget Network (EAGBN) is pleased to announce activities of the EAGBN to take place from 12-14 June 2006 at Colline Hotel Mukono, Uganda. The goal of the training workshop is to impart skills and techniques on how to use gender budgeting to analyze HIV/AIDS programmes.

The decision by Interpol to issue wanted person's notices against several Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leaders will scuttle ongoing efforts to peacefully end the war in northern Uganda and may escalate the violence there, religious leaders in the war-affected region have said. Interpol issued its first warrants on behalf of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for five LRA commanders on Thursday. The ICC had earlier issued its own arrest warrants for the five rebels on charges including murder, rape and the forced enlisting of children.