The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, will take place in Rio de Janeiro from June 20 to 22, twenty years after the celebration of the 'Earth Summit' in the very same city. There are several topics in the agenda resulting from intense negotiations that are still underway. In this respect, the World Forum of Civil Society Networks - UBUNTU - has issued a statement calling for mobilization at all levels in order to ensure that this new 'Earth Summit' measures up to the serious occasion we are going through. 'The world cannot afford another fiasco in Rio. It is time for responsibility. And, above all, it is time for action.'

If the life sentences for former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and one of his key allies were meant to placate Egyptians, they have had the opposite effect. Shortly after the verdict, tens of thousands of Egyptians from across the politcal spectrum, with perhaps the exception of die-hard Mubarak supporters and supporters of presidential candidate and former Mubarak cabinet member Ahmed Shafik, filled the streets of Egyptian cities to voice their anger at the verdicts. Northern cairo criminal court Judge Ahmed Refaat convicted Mubarak and Habib Al-Adly, the former head of Egypt’s interior ministry (MOI) merely of 'failing to stop the killings.' Many Egyptians believe Mubarak and Al-Adly together with the state’s security services, were responsible for the killing of hundreds of protestors and the torture and detention of thousands more political detainees.

Activists, supporters and officials of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), made the majority of indecent expressions recorded by a Media Foundation for West Africa study during weeks seven and eight monitoring of language use on radio. Twenty one (21) out of the total of 28 indecent expressions recorded were made by NDC officials and supporters.

Contrary to widespread expectations and public pronouncements, the Ugandan government has pulled the plug on controversial legislation which since 2000 has granted blanket amnesty to more than 26,000 members of armed groups, most notably the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The Act was passed as part of efforts to end hostilities in northern Uganda and bring the LRA to the negotiating table. Over the following six years, several detailed accords were drawn up but LRA leader Joseph Kony repeatedly refused to sign a comprehensive peace agreement. 'There will be no blanket amnesty for anyone now,' said Internal Affairs Minister Hilary Onek, who on 25 May used his prerogative to allow significant sections of the Amnesty Act to lapse.

Turkey has adopted a new course in foreign policy toward Africa under the impact of a new geographic imagination, states this article. 'The novel geographic imagination of Turkish policy-makers has been strongly influenced by Turkey's recent domestic political transformation and, to a lesser extent, by changes in regional and international politics.'

In this Ceasefire Magazine article, Micah Roshan Reddy reports from Wits University, South Africa, about a hunger strike by students against a proposed abusive sacking of 17 catering staff that became an international campaign and secured a remarkable victory.

South Sudan has shut down more than 20 private universities, placing the future of higher education on the spot in a country where public universities are partially operational. The move that has left thousands of students confused is part of streamlining the higher education system. Country's minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology, Peter Adwok Nyaba, said the institutions have been operating on letters of no objection that were only meant to enable them to acquire and develop land.

'The first time I saw a drone in the sky was about eight years ago, when I was thirteen. I have counted six or seven drone strikes in my village since the beginning of 2012. There were sixty or seventy primary schools in and around my village, but only a few remain today. Few children attend school because they fear for their lives walking to and from their homes. I am mostly illiterate. I stopped going to school because we were all very afraid that we would be killed. I am twenty-one years old. My time has passed. I cannot learn how to read or write so that I can better my life. But I very much wish my children to grow up without these killer drones hovering above, so that they may get the education and life I was denied.' This is one of the voices collected by the UK human rights group Reprieve and included in a lawsuit filed against the British government for aiding America’s unaccountable and illegal drone campaign.

While both African and European leaders continue to warn against partition in Mali, the rival movements backing a new, independent state in the north of the country have failed to follow through on a joint agreement to form the Islamic Republic of Azawad, leaving the project uncertain and raising suspicions that their show of unity masked deep divisions. The Tuareg-dominated National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was reported to have signed an agreement with the Islamic Ansar Dine movement in the northern city of Gao on 25 May. But in the days that followed, contradictory briefings, interviews and communiqués from both sides have suggested the document prepared after three weeks of talks was at best preliminary, with disagreements resurfacing as a final communiqué was worked on.

India has found a new gateway to project its Africa diplomacy as it explores a partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is engaged in a range of activities in the emerging continent. This possibility of collaborating in Africa emerged from talks between External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. With Africa suffering a host of debilitating health problems like malaria and HIV/AIDS, health has been identified as a focus area for prospective cooperation.

A suicide bomber has driven a car full of explosives into a church in northern Nigeria, killing 12 people in the latest deadly attack on Christians. Security forces at a road block nearby said the bomber forced his car through the checkpoint and drove into the church in Yelwa, on the outskirts of the city of Bauchi, on Sunday. A Reuters reporter at the scene counted 12 bodies being pulled from the building.

Sierra Leone's Anti-Corruption Commission has summoned Ghana's investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, to testify in a landmark corruption case involving a top government official. In a joint story with Sorious Samura aired on Al- Jazeera, the award winning Ghanaian journalist shocked the nation after he exposed a criminal ring defying an existing moratorium on timber export in the country. The indicted men allegedly claimed to be representing a top government official and accepted bribe to facilitate the registration of their illegal timber export business.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advised Ghana to remove subsidies on energy and fuel, a move that is likely to be met with resistance as it will make the commodities more expensive. Ghana's neighbour, Nigeria at one point removed fuel subsidies but the move was met with fierce and sometimes violent resistance. The IMF advised that a public service audit and the scrapping of subsidies will generate monthly savings of about GH¢160 million, which are needed to protect more productive expenditure and allow for an expansion of well-targeted social programmes to help the most vulnerable groups to cope with the tighter cost of living.

When Redempta*, 22, fled the violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) two years ago and came to Kenya, she quickly had to find a source of income to feed and house herself and her two younger siblings. But as an illegal immigrant with no knowledge of local languages, her options were very limited. 'I met some women from my country [DRC] and they introduced me to sex work because I needed to pay for the house and buy food for my siblings. I couldn't get any [other] work,' she told IRIN/PlusNews. As an illegal immigrant she is especially vulnerable because she can't report violent clients to the police, and is too afraid to seek medical help for her injuries.

The US Department of State’s 2011 Human Rights Report catalogues an ongoing range of abuses and discriminatory treatment directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people worldwide – starkly underscoring what Secretary Hillary Clinton has called '…one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time.' Speaking in Geneva last December, Secretary Clinton noted that, too often, LGBT people remain an 'invisible minority', members of which '…are arrested, beaten, terrorized, even executed…' while '…authorities empowered to protect them look the other way or, too often, even join in the abuse.'

The film highlights the extent to which the industrial agricultural system ­? and genetically modified seeds in particular ­? has impacted on the enormous agro?biodiversity evolved by farmers and communities around the world.

We call on all governments and citizens of the world to stand with us and express your appeals to Prime Minister Noda before he makes a final decision on the restart of Ohi nuclear power.

13 men from Darfur region of Sudan have been on hunger strike for 6 days at Campsfield Immigration Removal Centre in Kidlington, near Oxford.

The Judges of Trial Chamber II on 30 May sentenced convicted former Liberian President Charles Ghankay Taylor to a term of 50 years in prison for planning and for aiding and abetting crimes committed by rebel forces in Sierra Leone during the country's decade-long civil war. The Trial Chamber, comprised of Justice Richard Lussick of Samoa (Presiding), Justice Teresa Doherty of Northern Ireland, and Justice Sebutinde of Uganda, unanimously imposed the single global sentence for all 11 counts of the crimes for which Mr. Taylor was convicted. These included acts of terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, outrages upon personal dignity, cruel treatment, other inhumane acts, conscripting or enlisting of child soldiers, enslavement and pillage.

About one hundred Delft residents who are living in temporary structures whilst waiting for the government to provide them with RDP houses, blocked Symphony Way Road by burning tyres in a protest over their living conditions yesterday. This demonstration was the latest in a series of such protests in the area. Two weeks ago residents burnt tyres on the same road for the same reason.