At least 25 people have been killed in a fresh outbreak of political violence in the volatile southern oil town of Warri, residents and officials said on Wednesday.

As renewed fighting erupted on Tuesday in Bunia, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), humanitarian officials said movement around the town was almost "impossible" although the UN Mission in the country, MONUC, was reported to have secured the remaining limited humanitarian aid supplies.

The first batch of 2,880 Somali refugees who have been accommodated at Dadaab and Kakuma camps in northern Kenya, this week began returning to Somalia, more than a decade after they fled their war-torn country.

A cholera epidemic, which has affected parts of western Uganda since January, is persisting amid fears that a fresh influx of refugees from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo could exacerbate the situation.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has set up the logistics to repatriate more than 900 Third Country Nationals (TCNs) who have been marooned for several weeks in and around the southeastern Liberian coastal town of Harper, in Maryland County.

Burundi has often been in the news of late – and the standard news by-line has finally been modified. Until very recently one spoke – and heard speak of – “…the tragic civil war which has claimed between 200,000 and 250,000 lives, most of them civilian…” In the last months, these figures have been adjusted to reflect the consequences of ongoing violence and one now reads that anything from 250,000 to 300,000 lives have been lost in the bloody civil war that has torn this tiny landlocked Central African country for 10 years now. To these 300,000 dead we now dare mention, add over a million displaced (550,000 of them refugees in Tanzania), countless wounded, maimed and traumatized and those others who have disappeared, and you can easily understand why not one of the nearly 7 million Burundians has been left unscathed by the “crisis” as it is euphemistically called.

Beyond the R1,4-billion Eskom write-off of electricity arrears announced last week is a deeper political significance. The social movements, or "ultra-left" as they were labelled by the African National Congress last year, are beginning to make an impact on policy.

Africa appears to be getting more attention from the Pentagon as the U.S. military makes major geostrategic shifts in its global deployments. While the Defense Department has made no formal announcements about U.S. plans to acquire base rights on the African mainland, other moves suggest that interest toward that end is growing. On May 8, the Pentagon announced that a U.S. counter-terrorism warship, the USS Mt. Whitney, is returning home from its tour off the coast of the Horn of Africa, but not before leaving its command personnel and equipment at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, which has acted as the main U.S. base for counter-terrorist activities off-shore and in the region since after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Mt. Whitney's departure means that Camp Lemonier will now be home to 1,800 U.S. troops, sailors, fliers, and civilian personnel at a highly strategic point sandwiched between Ethiopia and Somalia and just across the Red Sea from Yemen.

The MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai says his party is mobilising its structures for the "final push" in the struggle for the removal of Zanu PF and the establishment of democratic governance in the country.
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Ruud Lubbers, the head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, has said it was vital to secure a political settlement to the long-running civil war in Liberia in order to end conflicts in neighbouring West African countries, which have forced over two million people to abandon their homes.

- More than a year since President Marc Ravalomanana took power in Madagascar, close to an estimated one-third of the residents in the capital, Antananarivo, remain mired in poverty. "The truth is that nothing has changed. But I still believe President Ravalomanana will do something," said 36-year-old Aimeline Razanadrosoa. "We need everything - food, water, clothes; but also some money so that my children can go to school."

The Cote d'Ivoire army is continuing to recruit young Liberians from Guiglo refugee camp in the west of the country to fight against Ivorian rebel forces in the area, according to UN officials and Liberian residents in the camp and the commander of French peacekeeping forces in the area.

Joseph Kony, the leader of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), has fled Southern Sudan with about 300 fighters and 600 captives to northern Uganda, security sources said.

Major human rights groups in Kenya have warned that the ongoing constitutional review process is being undermined by powerful political interests to deny Kenyans the changes they wanted when they voted in the opposition National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) last year.

Amnesty International has expressed deep shock at the Sierra Leone Parliament's ratification of a reciprocal impunity agreement with the United States of America (USA). "This is a completely unacceptable decision especially at a time when the country is starting the process of dealing with the mass human rights abuses that have taken place in its recent past," the organisation said.

Global warming could lead to a 10 percent drop in the production of maize in developing countries over the next 50 years, according to a new report published Monday by two key international research centres in the journal Global Environmental Change.

Fierce fighting has broken out between thousands of ethnic militia in an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with UN troops coming under heavy fire. Battles in the town of Bunia in Ituri province have left at least 18 people dead, but there are fears that the toll could be much higher. This week the bodies of many of those killed lay in the town's streets, some for days.

Two hundred ethnic Hema refugees were airlifted from Bunia in eastern DR Congo on Sunday and given what we assume is temporary sanctuary at Old Entebbe Airport as the security situation at home spun out of control. In Bunia, there are real fears of an implosion that would set off a long-feared orgy of killings. As the Uganda People's Defence Forces withdraw from Ituri province, they are leaving mayhem in their wake. It is extremely confusing that the Lendu militia, who only recently were supposed to enjoy Ugandan patronage, are now the ones fomenting chaos.

A black man who fell in love with a tall, slender Afrikaner woman found out this week the outlawed Immorality Act - which prohibited love across the colour-line - still exists as far as his employer is concerned. Johannes Montoedi of Wolmaransstad said he was fired this week from Buisfontein Safari Lodge, where he was employed as a driver, because of his affair with a white woman.

Having staked their fortunes to Nepad, President Mbeki of South Africa and to a lesser extent President Obasanjo of Nigeria are committed to proving the Nepad mantra that African solutions to African problems can resolve this crisis. And while a successful resolution of the Zimbabwe crisis will go a long way to easing investor fears, and perhaps force the G8 to come up with real cash for Nepad, the crisis in Zimbabwe should remind us that many African countries have yet to come to terms with the legacy of colonialism.