Three blasts have hit churches in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna in the latest apparent attacks targeting Christian worshippers in the region, emergency services and residents said. All of the blasts happened close to the city of Zaria. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in Sunday's blasts, but residents said they feared many people had been killed.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the slow death of freedom of information in Mali. 'In the past few days, a newspaper editor has been arrested for the second time in a month, soldiers raided a TV station to prevent it from broadcasting an interview with a Tuarag chief, and a French journalist was prevented from travelling to the breakaway north,' says RSF.

The People’s Summit has brought together civil society organisations from all over the world, and is seeking an alternative to the 'green economy' that will be defined by heads of state and government at the climax of the Rio+20 conference on 20-22 June. 'Native peoples know perfectly well what sustainable development involves. Our harmonious coexistence with nature is a living portrayal of our way of life, which neither destroys nor degrades,' said Sonia Guajajara, a coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). Miguel Palacín, a Quechua Indian from Peru and head of the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations (CAOI), said the green economy 'exists to legitimate and continue to rely on the capitalist system that has put us where we are today'.

Touareg rebels in northern Mali entered into talks with regional mediators for the first time last week, expressing a willingness to engage in dialogue with the international community. A delegation from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) led by Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assaleh met Burkinabe President and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) mediator Blaise Compaoré for the first time on Saturday (9 June) in Ouagadougou.

No single infection has probably inspired as many conspiracy theories as AIDS has over the last 30 years. The science of AIDS has endured tremendous attacks from as early as when the virus first appeared. A book entitled 'The AIDS Conspiracy – Science Fights Back', looks at how science has triumphed and sought to bring sense to a condition that has attracted a flurry of mad conspiracy theories. The book traces the emergence of AIDS denialism both in the United States and in South Africa from as early as when AIDS was believed to be the American government’s way of destroying sex and mankind. This is the second book on AIDS conspiracies and denialism that has been written by Nicoli Natrass, a professor at the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town.

S. Ushakumari is a horticulturist in India who has been working with a public interest research organization, Thanal, for the past 22 years. Part of her life’s work is a movement which is sweeping the globe: zero waste. Instead of seeking to 'manage' waste, this philosophy and campaign aim to eliminate it. Zero waste considers the entire life cycle of material objects - natural resource extraction, processing, production, transportation, consumption, and disposal - which is exhausting the planet’s resources and creating increased pollution. This is part of 'Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives'.

Biotech giant Syngenta has been criminally charged with denying knowledge that its genetically modified (GM) Bt corn kills livestock during a civil court case that ended in 2007. Syngenta’s Bt 176 corn variety expresses an insecticidal Bt toxin (Cry1Ab) derived from the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and a gene conferring resistance to glufosinate herbicides. EU cultivation of Bt 176 was discontinued in 2007. Similar varieties however, including Bt 11 sweet corn are currently cultivated for human and animal consumption in the EU. The charges follow a long struggle for justice by a German farmer whose dairy cattle suffered mysterious illnesses and deaths after eating Bt 176.

Key stakeholders meeting on 14 June to discuss the future of Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya acknowledge that there are tough choices ahead, but no agreed way forward. The panel discussion, entitled 'Dadaab 20 years on: what next?', was organized by NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Nairobi, and included government officials, UN agencies, NGOs and representatives from Dadaab's refugee community. Dadaab, originally built to house 90,000 refugees, currently hosts close to 500,000.

Libya's government has sent troops to put an end to six days of clashes between rival armed groups in the west of the country. The fighting, which left least 16 people killed and scores of others injured, is the latest episode of instability eight months since the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi's regime after a months-long conflict. As it seeks to impose its authority on a fractious country, Libya's new leadership on Saturday called for an immediate ceasefire in the fighting south of the capital Tripoli.

The public debt crisis that has crippled the abilities of the Eurozone states is evolving into a banking crisis with negative ramifications worldwide, states this article from 'In such a case, the political turmoil that would ensue - along with the proliferation of conflicts, ethnic animosities and revolts - would potentially bring about the most radical transformation of the established political order that the world has seen since the 1940s. In the case of such a critical circumstances, policy makers would seek out desperate solutions, sacrificing less valuable parts of the system for the survival of the rest, implementing massive debt relief programs and considerable changes in political management practices in the Eurozone as well as globally.'

Mauritanian salafists cannot agree on whether to follow their Maghreb neighbours into the political arena or reject democracy as an invention of infidels. The issue has led to cracks in the movement, with extreme adherents of the salafist current vowing to mobilise against the proposal from their more moderate peers.

The Worldwatch Institute has announced the launch of the much anticipated 2012 REN21 Renewables Global Status Report (GSR). GSR 2012 details worldwide developments in the renewable energy sector through 2011. The report highlights a number of key developments, including market and industry trends, investment flows, the shifting policy landscape, advancements in rural renewable energy deployment, and the evolving synergy between renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Israel launched a high-profile deportation drive against African migrants on Sunday 17 June with an airlift of South Sudanese whose government said they would be welcomed back as economic assets. The planned weekly repatriation flights from Tel Aviv to Juba have been played up by the Israeli government amid uncertainty as to how it might deal with much greater migrant influxes from Sudan, a hostile country, and war-ravaged Eritrea.

The global financial crisis of 2008/09 has not sent migrant workers streaming back home, despite worsening employment prospects and anti-immigration rhetoric in some destination countries, says a new book on migration and remittances, published by the World Bank. In fact, migrants may have mitigated some of the pain of the crisis as they tend to work for lower wages, receive fewer benefits and rely relatively little on the state, says the ‘Migration and Remittances during the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond’ book.

Negotiations for Rio+20 have been fraught with attempts to take 'people' and social development out of the equation and lay the solutions at the altar of market driven forces through the 'green economy.' For women and young people, this means that fundamental issues affecting them, such as their right to health and education, are in danger of being sidelined, says this article.

A petition backed by over 50 NGOs and charging Uganda's government with failing to prevent the deaths of expectant mothers was thrown out by the constitutional court on 5 June, but the petition’s supporters plan to appeal. The constitutional court argued that upholding the petition, which urges the government to boost health services, would have forced judges to wade into a political issue that was outside their jurisdiction. However, the petitioners said the court relied on outdated international law in making its decision and overlooked its constitutional obligation to protect Uganda’s mothers.

The United States military is expanding a secret network of air bases across Africa in order to spy on al-Qaeda and other such groups, a US newspaper said. The surveillance is carried out by small, unmarked turboprop planes with hidden state-of-the-art sensors that fly thousands of kilometres between air bases and bush landing strips across the vast continent, the Washington Post reported.

To what extent is China investing in experimental research? Which African countries have the most out-of-school children? How have graduation rates for girls in Latin America changed over time? The new UNESCO eAtlas series provides users with a powerful new tool to visualize data on critical policymaking issues in the field of education as well as science and technology. The three subjects covered are research and experimental development, out-of-school children and gender equality in education - an online companion to the print edition of the World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education.

In the latest of the Economic Justice Network's campaign to sensitize Ghanaians to why the Economic Partnership Agreements are bad for Ghana, here are two recordings of interviews that took place on EPAs. One discusses EPAs and Ghana's fuel subsidy and the other a 'face-off' with EU Ambassador to Ghana Claude Maerten.

A High Court judge claims he is ‘a bit constrained for time’ to deal with an urgent bail application by 29 MDC-T activists facing charges of killing a policeman. Asked by defence lawyers when he was going to deal with the bail application Justice Bhunu claimed he had a heavy workload and had not got around to dealing with the matter. This is despite the fact that the majority of activists charged in the case have been in custody for more than a year without trial.