The Rwandan government is to spend US $14.64 million pledged in April by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, on antiretroviral drugs, the Rwanda News Agency (RNA) reported on Tuesday.

Eliezer Niyitegeka, a former information minister, "went about gunning down, raping and murdering" ethnic Tutsi during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the prosecution claimed this week when the trial opened before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Nestled among lush fields of bananas and cooing wood pigeons, Ntarama's church bears witness to a horrific past that Rwanda will confront afresh in the months and years to come. In the hope of emptying overflowing cells, the government on Tuesday announced the relaunch of a traditional form of justice, aimed at letting ordinary Rwandans decide the fate of those who frenziedly shed blood throughout the land.

Rwandan Minister of Health Ezechias Rwabuhihi has said one million Rwandans suffer from malaria every year, the Rwanda News Agency reported on Monday.

Following three years of heated debate, the Rwandan parliament has cleared a bill that, if approved by the Supreme Court and President Paul Kagame, should provide the country with greater media freedom. "The issues that were hampering the progress of its final stages have been addressed," James Vuningoma, head of the Association of Rwandan Journalists, told IRIN on Wednesday.

The long-awaited trials to be conducted by Gacaca courts - an adapted form of Rwandan traditional participatory justice - are to begin on 18 June to deal with the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, in which Hutu extremists in the country killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.

One of the many problems the present government faced when it seized power in 1994 was what to do with the thousands of children who were orphaned by war, genocide and now AIDS. Many of these children are not in orphanages, but roam the streets in one of the poorest countries in the world. Theophane Nikyema, the representative of the United Nations Children's Fund(UNICEF) in Rwanda, on 6 June gave IRIN his views on the situation of children in the country.

Rwanda has launched an 18-month programme to combat gender and sexual violence, the minister of gender and women's development, Angeline Muganza, said on Thursday from the capital, Kigali. The US $627,379 USAID-funded project, launched on Tuesday, has four components. One of these is to conduct a survey in August for women of reproductive age covering the period before and after the genocide of 1994. The results would assist in understanding how women in this category had experienced sexual violence during the specified periods, the similarities and differences in terms of who was affected, who perpetrated the offences, where, when, and why, USAID-Rwanda reported on Thursday.

Rwandan journalists are excited about a Press Bill that, for the first time, proposes the liberalisation of the media in the Central African state of 8.6 million people. A section of the journalists, led by Dr James Vuningoma, head of the Association of Rwandan Journalists (ARJ) hailed the Bill, saying it was aimed at improving the state of the media in the country.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Tuesday began proceedings in the International Court of Justice against Rwanda for "massive, serious and flagrant violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law." The DRC says that through "killing, slaughter, rape, throat-slitting, and crucifying," Rwanda is guilty of genocide against more than 3,500,000 Congolese, including the victims of the recent massacres in the city of Kisangani.

Genocide suspect Ferdinand Nahimana led one of the 'public salvation committees' formed to purge ethnic Tutsi from Rwandan educational institutions in the 1970's, Alison Des Forges, a Rwandan historian and Human Rights Watch advisor, yesterday told judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Rwanda has deported the editor of a newspaper to Uganda. Mr Asuman Bisiika, editor and proprietor the Rwanda Herald, the country's only independent English language weekly was the third journalist to be forced out of the country in recent times.

Poachers in Rwanda have killed two of the world's last remaining mountain gorillas, a highly endangered species, in an attempt to capture and sell their young, Rwandan wildlife conservation officials said. "With just some 350 of them remaining, the population is so fragile that every individual lost is significant in terms of the viability of the mountain gorilla," said Katie Fawcett, director of the Karisoke Research Centre in the northwestern town of Ruhengeri.

Members of the United Nations and the Belgian government should be held to account for the events that led to the massacre of thousands of unarmed civilians in one of the worst atrocities of the Rwandan genocide in the first half of the 1990s, according to a prominent rights group which campaigns on behalf of abuse victims in Africa.

As Rwanda marks its seventh year since the tragedy of the 1994 genocide, and mourns the victims, the international community must once again confront the enormity of its failure to intervene in 1994. Recently, investigations and apologies have acknowledged that much more could have been done to halt the slaughter, and there does seem to be increased determination to learn lessons from Rwanda. This is to be welcomed, but it provides little comfort to the survivors. African Rights’ latest report, Left to Die at ETO and Nyanza, is about people whose lives did not matter enough in international terms, and whose deaths have become the statistics to prove this fact.

Clare Short was caught up in a diplomatic row last night after she accused the French of being directly implicated in the massacre of millions of Tutsis in Rwanda in the Nineties. The outspoken International Development Secretary said France had 'created genocides in Africa' after allegations that the French government backed Hutu interests in the country.

The UN refugee agency has condemned the killing on Thursday of two Rwandan children at a refugee centre in Nairobi, saying it would provide "all necessary" support for investigations being carried out by the Kenyan authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In his book We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Phillip Gourevitch quotes an American military intelligence officer he met in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, who equates genocide to "a cheese sandwich" and the Genocide Convention to something that "makes a nice wrapping for a cheese sandwich." The military officer is a non-Rwandan genocide denier, who refuses to admit that a crime against humanity was committed in Rwanda. Sadly, there are many like him, among them Rwandans.

The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTR) last week suspended Pierre Karangwa, a defense investigator, for his alleged involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has ruled out an extension of the term of his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) interim administration, due to expire next year, the Rwanda News Agency (RNA) reported on Thursday.