Computer prices in Uganda have reduced due to an increasingly competitive market ushered in by the growing number of assembling units in the recent years. These units have come up as a result of available good assembling market terms from manufacturers of various brands. In Kampala, computer-assembling businesses dot the shopping lanes and streets with a mix of branded and cloned computers being assembled and sold to 'hungry' customers.

Though the majority of Ugandans during the Feb 23rd presidential polls voted for President Museveni, there is massive growing discontent amongst the minority. Whereas Museveni won the 1996 presidential elections with a landslide margin of 75 percent, his support declined to 69 percent in 2001 and then to 59 percent in 2006. With an economy grappling with drastic donor cuts and power shortages, the next term of office for President Museveni could be the most challenging.

A section of employees in the New Vision establishment are troubled by reports that a colleague has compiled and submitted a dossier detailing the political inclination of each member of staff. Sources within the government-owned New Vision printing and publishing company claimed that the "clandestine work" by an editor and columnist with the Bukedde newspaper, had been erroneously leaked into the "wrong" hands, which culminated in some editorial staff getting access to what was supposed to be a confidential document.

If you want to register a domain name with a Ugandan country code, .ug, the man to speak to is Charles Musisi, an Internet entrepreneur who has managed the country's domain names over the past decade. However, Mr Musisi is now engaged in a dispute with the industry regulator, Uganda Communications Commission, over the right to manage the domain registry. UCC officials want to take over the administration of the registry in order to make domain names cheaper and to increase Internet use in Uganda.

It was one of the deadliest encounters United Nations troops had ever engaged in. Guatemalan Special Forces, operating under UN command in north-eastern Congo, made contact with 300 Lord's Resistance Army fighters who had crossed from Uganda into the Garamba National Park. After a fierce gun battle, eight Guatemalans were dead. The terrorists beheaded the commander and escaped. How could one of the world's most experienced special forces be outfought by what is usually described as a cult of half-crazed cannibals whose tactics are murder, rape and pillage? How could their leader, a dreadlocked psychopath called Joseph Kony with no military training, lead such a successful army?.

In Uganda, members of parliament have passed the non governmental organisations registration amendment bill 2001 requiring all NGOs and pentecostal churches to register with the internal affairs ministry. According to the new law, all organisations will renew their working licences after one year. The second renewal would be after two years while the third and last will take place after five years. An NGO board would have powers to revoke the licence of any NGO that fails to conform to its objectives.

Seventy percent of the population in war-affected northern Uganda live in absolute poverty, with each adult's consumption expenditure at about 20,000 Uganda shillings (US $11) per month, according to a survey released this week. A government study of the living conditions and social welfare of people living in northern Uganda, many of whom have been displaced by civil conflict, revealed a dire humanitarian situation in the region. Dwellings were substandard, and most of the population lived on less than $1 a day.

The Ugandan government has not yet paid over Shs700m in compensation to victims of torture and human rights violations, according to the Uganda Human Rights Commission. The Commission chairperson said "the government has an obligation to fulfill its liabilities," adding that "the government would not be promoting and protecting the human rights of Ugandans if it refused to pay these victims."

Trials on an HIV vaccine aimed at preventing transmission of the virus from infected mothers to their babies through breast feeding are to start in the next few months at Mulago Hospital in Uganda. The study is to last two years and the randomly selected babies shall be monitored by a team of doctors from the clinic at Mulago.

The International Criminal Court has run into serious problems with its first big case - the situation in northern Uganda. There is no doubt that appalling crimes have occurred here. Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army have abducted thousands, many of them children, and have systematically tortured, raped, maimed and killed their victims. Nevertheless, the ICC has confronted outright hostility from a wide range of groups. This book argues that much of the antipathy to the ICC is based upon ignorance and misconception.

The Ugandan military has barred soldiers who are HIV positive from some training programmes. Military officials say the decision was taken on humanitarian grounds so that HIV/Aids sufferers did not have to undergo strenuous military training. But the move has been strongly criticised by Aids campaigners, who say it shows ignorance. Uganda has been held up as a model of how to fight HIV/Aids, with infection rates falling from 15% to 5%.

Accustomed to their age-old freedom to roam, the nomadic pastoralists of Uganda are now having to cope with a law that seeks to settle and ‘modernise’ their communities. Pastoralist societies in Uganda are increasingly facing market-driven demands to ‘settle down’ on a piece of land – pressures that are not only disrupting their centuries-old lifestyle but also taking a toll on the indigenous, long-horned Ankole cows. "Before the idea of owning a box (owning land) came about, our cows used to move freely across boundaries. This was better use of land," says Richard Mugisha from the pastoralist community of Ankole Region in Mbarara District.

Uganda's Ministry of Finance controlled expenditure tightly in the first half of the 2005/6 financial year after donors cut or withheld $73 million in aid, a ministry report says. According to the semi-annual budget performance report, cuts in expenditure mitigated against the shortfall in domestic resources and grants, resulting in a budgetary deficit of Ush127.8 billion ($69 million) against a projected deficit of Ush140.9 billion ($76.1 million).

The violent death rate for northern Uganda currently stands at 146 per week, or 0.17 violent deaths per 10,000 people per day. "This is three times higher than in Iraq, where the incidence of violent death in the period following the allied invasion was estimated to be 0.052 per 10,000 people per day," claims a new report by a coalition of over 50 leading non-governmental organisations, Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU). Almost two million people have been displaced by the conflict. A staggering 25,000 children have been abducted during the 20-year war. A quarter of the children in northern Uganda over 10 years old have lost one or both parents.

The Coalition for Peace in Africa (COPA) Eastern Africa Regional office would like to recruit the Finance/Administrative Officer for the Applied Conflict Transformation Studies (ACTS) Programme. This is a two-year Masters programme in conflict transformation, which bridges the gap between academic research and the wealth of experience that exists on the ground.

An ongoing probe into the misuse of money from the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Uganda has unearthed a "pile of filth" in the running of affairs in the East African country, according to the head of the commission of inquiry. Following the suspension in August 2005 of five grants worth US $367 million, questions had arisen regarding the fund managers' integrity. The Global Fund lifted its suspension in November 2005, after agreeing with the government on ways to overhaul the management of the fund. President Yoweri Museveni ordered a judicial inquiry into the use of the money.

United Nations under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland declared the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda "the world's worst form of terrorism" during a visit to a camp for internally displaced persons in Pader District. "Conditions here are totally unacceptable. It has to change, because we believe people have to live a better life and have a better future," he said during a visit to Patongo camp, some 400 km north of the capital, Kampala. Egeland, who is on a four-nation, nine-day tour of conflict- and drought-ravaged East Africa, said there was a need to provide security to the almost two million people living at camps across northern Uganda.

Makerere University Kampala, is to scale down its bandwidth from the current 21 Mbps (Megabits per second) to 6 Mbps due to lack of funds. Bandwidth controls the amount of data that can be passed along a communications channel in a given period of time. A higher bandwidth means a lot of data can be transferred within a short period of time. But the university has failed to sustain the current bandwidth due to lack of funds. The university's public relations officer says the bandwidth scale down will make the Internet services much slower thus affecting data communication.

United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has met with Uganda’s President and other top officials in wide-ranging talks that covered the need to improve the conditions in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) uprooted in the 20-year rebellion by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Mr. Egeland also discussed with President Yoweri Museveni the need to do more to protect civilians, and also the idea of a Special Envoy for Northern Uganda.

On the Ugandan dance troupe's visit to the United States, it is a hell of a thing that the AIDS-orphaned children of a nation that has been bled dry by imperialism then go to that bloodsucking empire's home base and "grin and skin," as Black folk put it.

Another, more extreme version of that is when the US GIs took a smoke break from raping and killing in My Lai, some of them then gave chocolate bars to some dazed, surviving children (whose parents, again, the US soldiers had just been slaughtering).

This dance tour is a little more removed, roundabout. But it's much the same thing. On the other hand, if a big part of why they are on tour is to raise money, who else has money but the populace in the imperialist powers? If it is to promote some sort of nebulous "good will" (a highly questionable proposition), then in some sort of perverted logic, it is most important to try to achieve this, uh, 'better will' precisely in those countries who have long rained down hatred on Uganda, Africa, the Third World.

But looking at it thusly makes it look ridiculous, a total farce. You have kidnapped my ancestors, steamrollered my country and its institutions, pillaged our resources and left us in ruins -see me dance!

But governments are overwhelmed by this enormous AIDS crisis. Despite the greater picture and all the historical perspective one might bring to bear, here and now people need help. So how can we say anything to undercut the effort these good young people are making? We have to applaud and support their tremendous effort, despite all our misgivings about them being used by those with a more sinister, imperialist agenda. Yes, it is a trap, but it is one we cannot avoid. All we can do is try to attack these problems on every front. And if somehow this dance troupe, besides raising some funds for one particular project, laudable in itself, manages to raise awareness of the African AIDS crisis - inseparable from its other problems - here in the center of this world empire that has its hand in everything, then it is a good thing. The main thing is the people, always the people.