A top leader of the banned Egyptian opposition Muslim Brotherhood has been arrested along with a number of other members, the group has said. Mahmud Ezzat, who police say is the organisation's fourth-highest official, was arrested at home in Cairo at dawn on Sunday, a group spokesman said. He said authorities wanted to stifle opposition to planned electoral reform, which the group says is cosmetic.

Is the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) a panacea for Africa’s development problems or just another fad destined for the continent’s development cemetery? The popular and/or political critique is that NEPAD is a creation of some few African leaders, notably Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Obdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, with backing from the West. That critique is justified but there is the risk of throwing out the baby with the bath water, says this commentary from Namibia's New Era newspaper.

Britain has declared that the development of Africa will be a priority at the G8 summit, but little agreement is in sight over the preferred aid route. British officials say that support for the International Finance Facility (IFF) proposed by Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown is rising. But there is no sign that the United States will abandon or amend the aid programme under its Millennium Challenge Account to adopt the IFF.

Ethiopia's main opposition party on Monday threatened to boycott the next parliament unless its complaints of alleged vote rigging in last week's general elections were resolved. Hailu Shawel, leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), said his party would not join any government if it believed that the elections were unfair.

Francois Bozize, the incumbent leader of the Central African Republic (CAR), who came into power through a coup in 2003, was on Tuesday declared the winner of the country's presidential elections. Bozize won the final round of the poll by 64.6 percent of the vote, the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, Jean Willybiro Sako, announced at an official ceremony at the National Assembly.

Africa’s peacekeeping mission in war-torn Darfur risks failure unless it receives increased support, the African Union (AU) warned on Wednesday. Speaking on the eve of a major fundraising conference for the peacekeeping mission, AU Peace Commissioner Said Djinnit told reporters Darfur was a critical test of international commitment and Africa’s resolve to end wars on the continent.

PeaceWomen has received a Diola translation of SCR 1325 from the Women in Peacebuilding program (WIPNET) of the West African Peacebuilding Network (WANEP). Diola is spoken in the Casamance region of Senegal (South). The Diola translation was prepared for women involved in WIPNET's Rural Women's Peace Initiative, which took place earlier this month. Approximately 40 women in the communities of Kaguitte and Djibidone were trained using WIPNET's Community Women Peacebuilding Manual. The goal of this initiative was to build the capacity of rural/grassroots women's groups to play active roles in preserving peace in their communities. The translation was disseminated to the women in order raise awareness of the resolution and its meaning.

More than one million Liberians have registered to vote in presidential elections in October which are designed to seal the West African nation's return to peace. But officials have said that the number of displaced people who had signed up for a ballot paper was disappointingly low. Some of those still living in the Wilson Corner Camp on the outskirts of Monrovia told IRIN that the 1997 elections, held during a brief lull in Liberia's long-running civil war, had left them with a nasty taste in their mouths.

In the 25 years since Walter Rodney’s assassination much has changed in the world. The face of the oppression that has deepened the misery of working people worldwide has changed from its dictatorial manifestation into its "democratic" form. Everywhere, poverty and misery are now products of a democracy that has been reduced to electoral competition among a self-regarding elite who thrive by exploiting every division among the working poor - be it racial, religious, tribal, ethnic or other cultural difference - in order to hold them in subjugation, the better to be exploited by the new global masters.

The members of the Walter Rodney 25th Anniversary Commemoration Committee - friends, colleagues, and other associates of Walter Rodney in Guyana and the wider Caribbean, Africa, North America, London and elsewhere in Europe, and Latin America, all of whom share his vision of the emancipation of the working people and other oppressed sections of society - are organizing events to commemorate his inspiring life, work and insights and to draw attention to the challenges faced today by working people throughout the world. The commemoration takes the form of a series of “groundings” in Guyana from June 6-13 2005 to mark the 25 years since Walter Rodney’s assassination.

This is a very good and educative magazine, full of issues that really ought to be sorted out to make the world a better place to live in for all classes of people.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund, both financial organizations that aim to reduce poverty, are preventing foreign aid from reaching HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries, claims an article in this week’s issue of The Lancet. Ted Schrecker of the University of Ottawa and Gorik Ooms of Médecins Sans Frontières in Brussels, write expenditure ceilings for public health, created by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), stop countries from benefiting from outside investment in their health programmes.

The number of Rwandans returning home from the eastern forest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has risen dramatically since a feared militia said it, too, would repatriate after disarming, the United Nations refugee agency said. In the last week, some 230 Rwandans volunteered to go home from the DRC with assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the wake of an announcement on 31 March from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) that it would disarm and return home peacefully.

A Nigerian lawyer accused President Olusegun Obasanjo of corruption and abuse of power in a lawsuit on Monday for raising 4 billion naira towards building a personal library, court papers showed. The lawsuit follows an outcry from some shareholders that banks were put under pressure by the powerful state oil company to contribute to the private library, which is destined to house Obasanjo's presidential papers.

Zimbabwe has put the army and police on high alert as deepening economic and social hardships push public anger to dangerous levels, Zim Online has learnt. Intelligence sources said an ongoing police crackdown against informal traders - the majority of Zimbabweans now depend on petty and informal trade for survival – had raised fears in government security departments of a possible spontaneous backlash by irate citizens.

Some 1,600 internally displaced people (IDPs) began their journey home along the mighty River Congo, from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the provinces of Equateur and Orientale. In a statement, Jens Laerke, the information officer in the post-conflict unit of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said the IDPs boarded a Congolese naval vessel at the Kinshasa harbour, marking the start of the operational phase of a joint UN pilot project aimed at providing protection and security for 67,554 IDPs.

A report by a human rights committee critical of the Government’s commitment to fight graft was due to be launched last week. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) report accuses the Government of losing the spirit to fight graft, despite repeated pledges to prioritise the eradication of the vice. The report by the public-funded commission, contained in its publication, Nguzo za Haki, concludes that rather than tackle re-emerging graft the Government is downplaying the problem.

Talks on forming a government of national unity between newly elected President Faure Gnassingbe and Togo's main opposition parties have ended without agreement, but the failure of these negotiations caused little surprise on the streets of the capital Lome on Friday. Gnassingbe held talks with exiled opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio and other prominent opposition figures in the Nigerian capital Abuja last Thursday.

A visit to Guinea-Bissau by four West African leaders at the weekend failed to defuse tension that has been building up in the country ahead of next month's presidential election. Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior confirmed reports that have been circulating for several weeks that arms have been smuggled into the country to support civilian militias.

Paramilitary units armed with batons, riot shields and tear gas patrolled main roads in Harare this week as police warned they would not tolerate protests against their crackdown on street trading - the only livelihood for thousands of poor township dwellers. Police Chief Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka said 9 653 people were arrested in the five-day blitz on street vendors.

More disciplinary action is expected in Liberia to weed undisciplined and corrupt officers out of the national police force, said acting commissioner Joseph Kerkula last Thursday following the sacking this month of 400 officers. "Any officer who fails to do things in cognisance of our guidelines will be dismissed," Kerkula said. "All the officers know about these guidelines so it is their primary duty to respect them."