The government of Eritrea has asked Antonio Bandini, the Italian ambassador in Asmara, to leave the country following European Union (EU) protests over alleged human rights violations in Eritrea in the last two weeks.

Fighting in northern Angola has sent a new wave of refugees into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday.

A report released on Monday by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on economic aid to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) says that transparency and liberalisation advocated by Kinshasa at the political and economic levels, and with respect to human rights, offers a "real opportunity to end the crisis".

The US said on Friday that it would continue to impose restrictions on Sudan despite the UN Security Council's decision on Friday to lift its five year-old sanctions, news agencies reported.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday called on the Ugandan Parliament to reject a proposed law which it claimed would threaten the legitimate activities of civil society.

A senior adviser to Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir has said the IGAD-sponsored peace process is a crucial part of efforts to end Sudan's 18-year civil war, AFP reported on Monday.

Nelson Mandela, the chief mediator of the Burundi peace talks, said on Monday that leaders of the Great Lakes countries had agreed to "a number of issues" that had been hindering implementation of the Burundi peace agreement, Radio Tanzania reported.

Leaders of opposition parties in Guinea-Bissau agreed on Tuesday to press for the holding of an extraordinary session of the National Assembly to discuss the situation in the West African country, a diplomatic source in the capital, Bissau, told IRIN.

Encouraging to see the growing awareness of the advantages of conservation tillage on our continent. Spurred on by, for example, the draft problems of the south (as highlighted in John Asburner's visit to Swaziland and Lesotho) and the brief planting 'window' of the Sudan, farmers throughout Africa are turning to conservation tillage and, although there remain many unsolved constraints, the linking of commercial and subsistence initiatives (as in the Simdlangetshwa Field Day) and the international exchange of ideas and channeling of research resources facilitated by ACT, is lending momentum to the 'agrarian revolution'.

Although "measures of prevention, education, and protection aimed at the eradication of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" had been declared a central theme of the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), this observer found disappointingly little examination of education of any kind, especially human rights education, as a tool to prevent and combat racism.

The United Nations health chief has urged countries around the world to set up defences against biological and chemical attacks.

China, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan are calling for a U.N.-sponsored coalition against terrorism. The move offers the world body a chance to reassert itself but Washington has some reservations.

The case in which the Ogiek community in Kenya has taken the government to court over the fate of their Mau Forest land will begin on October 4. The Ogiek, a forest dwelling Kenyan community has been fighting for their right to remain on their ancestral land in the Mau Forest, Rift Valley Province of Kenya.

Six people have been found battered to death in a cell at Thika police station, in the outskirts of Nairobi. Five of them were found dead in the tiny room, with injuries all over their body, while a sixth died while being taken to hospital by police.

The much vaunted ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo is looking more precarious by the day.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has halted the trial of several opposition activists accused of plotting with the United States against Sudan.

In the last major terrorist attack on US installations, 244 people were killed and 5,000 injured in East Africa more than three years ago. Nairobi was the worst hit, with 226 fatalities. A Gemini News Service correspondent looks at how the city rebuilt itself - and how its residents are still trying to come to terms with the act of outrage.

Remember the last time two nations went to war over water? Probably not, since it was 4,500 years ago. But today, as demands for water hit the limits of a finite supply, more than 50 countries on five continents might soon be spiralling toward water disputes unless they move quickly to strike agreements on how to share the rivers that flow across international boundaries.

Between 1980 and 2000 Zimbabwe was a relatively peaceful, stable and generally tolerant country. It is now being torn apart by violence and the ZANU (PF) government is now constantly inciting racial hatred.

Top Zanu commanders from the Dare Rechimurenga and the Zanla High Command killed former Zanu chairman, Herbert Chitepo, in Zambia in 1975, a special report by a Zambian commission into the late leader's mysterious death reveals.