The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) has warned of the serious consequences that the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB) will have on media freedom in South Africa. In an opinion piece titled "Media must wake up over terror bill", carried in one of the country's newspapers, the "Sowetan Sunday World", the FXI has argued that one cannot fail to notice that in the on-going public debate about the ATB, the manner in which the proposed legislation will affect the media in South Africa appears to have been conveniently ignored.

Wrangling over legal aid delayed the Pretoria High Court treason trial of 22 alleged Boeremag members on Monday to June 9. Judge Eben Jordaan granted a postponement after the Legal Aid Board undertook to reconsider applications for assistance from the accused.

The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues last Friday called on UN agencies to address issues related to the trafficking and sexual exploitation of indigenous girls, and urged states to create rehabilitation programmes, UN News reported. The appeal was among a number of recommendations made by the Forum in the domains of human rights, health, culture, education, economic and social development and the environment.

Local and international human rights campaigners on Sunday denounced violence which they said was "blindly directed at the civilian population" in Burundi, and urged the army and rebels to respect a ceasefire agreement reached on 2 December 2002.

Togolese presidential candidate Leopold Gnininvi dropped out of Togo's presidential election on Monday saying he wanted to unite the divided opposition to President Gnassingbe Eyadema behind the rival candidature of Emmanuel Bob-Akitani.

The main pipeline supplying natural gas to Nigeria's biggest power station has been ruptured by explosives planted by suspected ethnic Ijaw militants, the navy said on Monday. The pipeline which was blasted on Saturday at the village of Ajama, near the oil town of Warri in the oil-rich Niger Delta, supplies gas from transnational ChevronTexaco's Escravos gas plant to the Egbin thermal power station, near Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos.

Families facing eviction from a displacement camp near the Ethiopian capital complained bitterly on Tuesday after a mysterious fire tore through their ramshackle homes.

In an effort to hasten progress towards ending two decades of civil war in Sudan, mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo is drawing up a final peace agreement to present to the two warring parties next week. “I am developing a final agreement. I am working on it,” Sumbeiywo told IPS this week. This is part of the new holistic style of negotiating which begun in the latest round of talks, held in Kenya, which broke off on May 21 with several major issues still unresolved.

While a transition government is to be installed in the Congo in June, the UN program for voluntary disarmament remains a failure. The recent violence in Ituri, where hundreds have died horrifically, illustrates MONUC's impotence. A new approach is needed to disarm and reintegrate Hutu rebels in eastern Congo. The UN monitoring mission urgently needs deployment of a rapid reaction force to restore order in Ituri and prevent further massacres of the civilians it is already mandated to protect. It also needs military capacity to deter Hutu rebels from destabilising Rwanda and to back renewed diplomatic efforts for voluntary disarmament. The Security Council should seize the opportunity of a new transitional government to give a dynamism to disarmament efforts, and the international community must convince Rwanda that the solution to ending the violent spiral is its own political opening. This is according to a new report from the International Crisis Group.

Dead bodies litter Bunia's empty streets. From some the blood still drips from machete slashes, spear thrusts and bullet wounds. Others are two weeks old and stinking, half-eaten by the packs of dogs flopping lazily about the once-prosperous north-eastern capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The current crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo vividly illustrates how marginal our part of Africa is in terms of world politics. Note that in a period of only four years, since 1998, more than four million people, mainly Congolese and Rwandese nationals, the latter having fled to Congo after the Rwanda Patriotic Forces took over power in Kigali in 1994, have been killed. Unfortunately, the attention that the West and the broader international community have focused on this area, in terms of resources and the commitment to resolve this conflict, has been dismal at best, says this commentary.

Leader of the opposition, Tony Leon, called on President Thabo Mbeki last Friday to "take responsibility as the arms deal unravels". In his weekly column in the Democratic Alliance's (DA) on-line publication, SA Today, he said it was becoming increasingly apparent the public did not know the full extent of the scandal and where it would lead.

Ivory Coast's new reconciliation government is preparing to meet for the first time in the rebel stronghold of Bouake. Prime Minister Seydou Diarra has now arrived there, in the latest move towards healing splits from an armed rebellion last September.

Flooding in eastern Africa has claimed the lives of more than 160 people and has displaced some 167,000 others. The worst affected area is the Gode Region in eastern Ethiopia where 69 villages are under water, and other villages are impossible to reach due to severe flooding. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reported malaria outbreaks, measles and diarrhoea cases in flooded areas, and says the risk of acute respiratory infection and cholera is increasing.

As one way of reducing poverty in the country, the Mzuzu Environmental Education Centre has embarked on a campaign to educate the community around Mzuzu on bee and guinea fowl farming. Parks and wildlife Officer, Obedi Mkandawire, told The Malawi Standard that the Centre has decided to assist government to fight poverty in the country by teaching, identifying funds for farmers and encouraging the community to practice bee and guinea fowl farming because honey and guinea fowl eggs are on high demand.

Vital documents requested by defence lawyers in the treason trial of the country's opposition leaders have been destroyed, Zimbabwe's top intelligence chief said Wednesday. Retired brigadier general Happyton Bonyongwe, who heads Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), told the High Court that some documents relating to government payments to Canadian-based political consultancy firm, Dickens and Madison, have been destroyed.

The government's final report on the R60-billion arms procurement deal was heavily edited and it left out findings on gifts received by key players in the controversial deal, Business Day reported on Wednesday. The final report, handed over to Parliament last year, also omitted "inaccuracies" in a defence department presentation to Parliament's select committee on public accounts (Scopa), the newspaper said.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have jointly called on the U.N. Security Council to authorize the deployment of a rapid reaction force to protect civilians in Ituri, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In an open letter to the Security Council, the two human rights organisations called the situation in Ituri "a critical test" of the Security Council's commitments to prevent mass killings and protect civilians, and noted that the United Nations Observation Mission in Congo (MONUC) has been unable to adequately protect civilians.

In the build-up to Zimbabwe’s controversial presidential election in March 2002 the South African government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees met to prepare for a potential refugee influx. What lessons were learned? As drought and political instability hit southern Africa, could South Africa cope with massive famine-induced displacement?

Policy-makers should recognise the obligation of the international community to curb multinationals which pursue extractive development of natural resources, sustain counterinsurgency and condone human rights violations, according to a paper from the Institute of Development Studies that examines the assets management strategies of war-affected households in Sudan's Bahr el Ghazal region. Policy-makers further need to understand that conflict in southern Sudan cannot be ended without a massive injection of international resources to tackle long-standing deprivation and horizontal inequalities.