Twenty-five South Africans who suffered at the hands of the apartheid security police have claimed a small victory after a United States court ratified a settlement between the claimants and General Motors. Khulumani Support Group attorney, Charles Abrahams, has been quoted as saying that, 'The settlement is a small amount. It was a show of good faith on the part of General Motors, considering that they are bankrupt.' The claimants and the Khulumani Support Group, a lobby group for financial reparations for victims of apartheid, will share an amount of $1.5-million.

The third Global Health Watch report shows that health financing, including dwindling support for AIDS, is one of the challenges facing global health. The third edition of the Global Health Watch report provides an analysis of health challenges facing the world today. It also seeks solutions to these challenges. The new edition identifies three main issues that affect people around the world. 'We talk about the three acts – the three main crises that face poor people every day...the crises of finance, of food and fuel, which are life crises squeezing people’s lives throughout the world,' said Peter Benjamin of the People’s Health Movement, during the launch of the report in Johannesburg.

The Tunisian unemployment rate reached 18.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, with nearly three-quarters of jobless citizens under the age of 30. The rate marks a 0.6 per cent rise from the second quarter of 2011, according to data released by the Tunisian National Institute of Statists (INS) on 23 February. The total number of jobless Tunisians was reported at more than 738,000, a jump of 33,500 people.

Nicolas Sarkozy has declared there are too many foreigners in France, deliberately using extreme-right rhetoric to regain ground in his difficult re-election battle. The French president is already under attack by religious leaders and from within his own party for veering to the right and stoking anti-Muslim sentiment by forcing the marginal topic of halal meat into the centre of his campaign. He has now vowed to cut immigration by half and limit state benefits for legal migrants.

Newmont Gold has allocated around 20 per cent of its 'core assets' to two projects in Ghana - both of which have now come under fire from local communities. Human rights abuses have been reported from the Ahafo mine. And, in February, the people of Yayaaso, Adausina, Ntronan and surrounding communities in the Birim North District, eastern Ghana, carried out a peaceful demonstration against Newmont' proposed Akyem project.

Gold miners in Southern Africa are probably the group worst affected by tuberculosis (TB) in the world. This is according to Dr David Mametja of South Africa’s National TB Programme. In a recent interview, Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi compared the country’s TB burden to a snake, and said that TB among mineworkers the fangs of the snake. Speaking at a briefing earlier this week, Mametja also emphasised government’s concern about the high prevalence of the disease among miners, and said that it is holding an entire region back in the fight against TB.

The world’s nuclear weapons industry is being funded - and kept alive - by more than 300 banks, pension funds, insurance companies and asset managers in 30 countries, according to a new study. And these institutions have substantial investments in nuclear arms producers. Released by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the 180-page study says that nuclear-armed nations spend over 100 billion dollars each year assembling new warheads, modernising old ones, and building ballistic missiles, bombers and submarines to launch them.

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity can and has been used to deny fundamental rights that are guaranteed to all individuals under international law.

The marginalization of indigenous communities during concession negotiations and project implementation has resulted in high tensions around a number of foreign direct investment projects in Liberia, says this report from Columbia University's Centre for Conflict Resolution that looks at the social impact of FDI. 'This tension has occasionally led to violence and other forms of social unrest, which could feasibly lead to conditions that might threaten peace in the country.'

In 2009, 37 poor families won the right to receive permanent houses in terms of an order issued by the Durban High Court. The families must now return to court to force the eThekwini Municipality to obey the order. The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) and Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM) are suing the Mayor of eThekwini on behalf the families, who now live in the Richmond Farm Transit Camp near KwaMashu, Durban.

The Municipal Services Project, which explores alternatives to privatisation, has a new website which is well worth a visit. It has links to publications, blog posts and a twitter feed.

Newly independent South Sudan has some of the highest blindness rates in the world. Endemic diseases that have been stamped out in other post-conflict countries are rife, and the only fully functioning eye centre is in the capital, Juba. 'There is only one ophthalmologist in South Sudan and that's me,' says Wani Mena, who is also the Ministry of Health's representative for eye care and head of the country's main hospital. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends one ophthalmologist for every 400,000 people, while South Sudan has one for more than nine million people.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party has accused South Africa of gross interference in the country’s internal affairs. This comes after President Jacob Zuma’s government insisted that its troubled neighbour must institute serious reforms before holding fresh elections. South Africa’s Foreign Affairs minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, told her country’s parliament on Monday that 'our government expects that there would be no deviation from the provisions' of Zimbabwe’s power-sharing agreement. A member of Zanu PF’s top decision-making body, the politburo, Jonathan Moyo, said Nkoana-Mashabane had no mandate to comment on political developments in Zimbabwe.

Following the killing of yet another Somali journalist, Ali Ahmed Abdi, the global media rights body - International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) - on Monday expressed 'total dismay over the serial killing of Journalists' in Somalia, PANA reports. The latest killing followed the 'brutal murder' of another Somali media executive, Abukar Hassan Mahamoud, barely a week ago. According to IFJ, three Somali journalists have been killed since the start of this year and Abdi becomes the 30th journalist murdered in Somalia since 2007.

A campaign by US activists to capture alleged Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony has gone viral on the web. Invisible Children's half-hour film on the use of child soldiers by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army has been viewed nearly 10m times on YouTube. But an article in Foreign Affairs accused Invisible Children and other non-profits of having 'manipulated facts for strategic purposes' was circulated on the web.

Following advocacy by the Refugee Law Project, the Attorney General of Uganda exercised his powers under section 24 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act and has waived the registration fees payable by refugees in order to register a birth or death in Uganda. Previously, refugees were treated as foreigners and were therefore required to pay $40 in order to obtain a birth or death certificate.

Tanzanian ports may soon become idle if plans to build new and competitive facilities are not implemented now.This comes in the wake of plans by Kenya to construct a 23 billion US dollar transshipment port at Lamu. Experts say that in today's business every port in the world keeps pace with fewer but much larger shipping lines and concentration of cargo into bigger vessels able to utilise just a few key hub ports.

Brazil is supporting the controversial UNESCO-Obiang prize in an attempt to improve relations with President Obiang, but this puts Brazil's own international reputation at stake. Brazil is showing questionable judgment by actively supporting the UNESCO-Obiang prize in an apparent effort to strengthen its relations with the regime of President Obiang, which has accumulated a long list of human rights violations in the course of its 32 years in power, says this article on the EG Justice website.

The Law Society of SA has written to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) raising a concern about South African judges serving on the bench in Swaziland, saying that the Swazi judiciary appeared to be compromising the rule of law. There is a long tradition of southern African judges, especially when retired, serving on the benches of each other’s courts, However, the Swazi judiciary has come in for increasing criticism over the past couple of years, reaching crisis point last year when Judge Thomas Masuku was fired by King Mswati on what were believed to be trumped-up charges.

A fire that killed two workers and destroyed a gas exploration rig off Nigeria's south-east coast has gone out after 46 days, Chevron has said. Friends of the Earth, which said this was the world's worst such accident in recent years, welcomed the news. The environmental group has urged Chevron to compensate local Nigerian fishermen for income lost while the fire burned.