While the two Malawian gay men Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga have been granted a presidential pardon on “humanitarian grounds”, annulling a 14 year sentence for “gross indecency and unnatural acts”, speculation is mounting on the exact conditions of their release.

The Sudanese government has said it will no longer engage in peace talks with the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem), Darfur's main anti-government group, saying instead its leaders will be prosecuted. Ghazi Atabani, chief negotiator of the talks, said mediators had been notified of the government's decision.

In Hopley Farm, a resettlement camp about 10km south of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, Simon Dhewa's chicken coup has been converted into a bedroom for his three daughters, the eldest of which also uses it as a venue for her commercial sex activities. The 20-year-old is the sole bread winner for her 45-year-old widowed father, her two sisters and two brothers. The residents of Hopley Farm have nicknamed her "chicken".

France’s international public service radio station RFI (Radio France Internationale) has launched this year’s Prix Découverte RFI (RFI Discoveries Award). Since 1981 RFI has organised this award for singers and musicians which is open to entrants living in Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean islands

Rich countries need to change the way they deal with Africa, shifting from aid to trade if they are to avoid losing ground to the emerging economic players of Asia and South America, a top think-tank has said. In a report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs at London’s Chatham House analysing Africa’s small but evolving influence, the Western perception of Africa as a hopeless case was challenged, painting the continent rather as home to a billion people and up to 40 percent of the world’s natural resources.

Laboratory monitoring to determine when to switch to second-line treatment may be cost-effective for many countries and could substantially improve life expectancy, April Kimmel and colleagues reported in a modelling study using 1999 to 2008 data from the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) published in the advance online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Kalahari Bushmen are taking the government of Botswana to court over its refusal to allow them access to a water borehole on their land. The case is due to be heard at Botswana’s High Court in Lobatse on 9 June 2010.

The NEW PATH: AFRICAN FORUM FOR INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT is published quarterly by the African Research and Resource Forum (ARRF) and provides a forum for innovative thinking about our common future and about how we need to tackle the most intractable problems facing Africa today – focusing on Eastern Africa. The editor invites your articles (opinion and analysis) for the June 2010 edition. This edition of 'New Path' will cover Elections management in EAC Member States: Focus on upcoming elections in Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania

The presence of a large mining sector in African countries is a strong influence on the severity of a country’s TB epidemic, especially in countries with a high HIV prevalence, and more needs to be done in the mining industry to control TB, a new Oxford University-led study has found.

HIV-positive individuals who are obese or overweight are less likely to die or develop tuberculosis than people with HIV who are of normal weight, South African investigators report in the online edition of AIDS. “Our findings show a clear protective effect…of increasing BMI [body mass index] on both all-cause mortality and incident TB [tuberculosis] in a South African cohort”, comment the investigators, “person with obese and overweight BMI have a significantly decreased risk of both mortality and TB.”

African countries are not doing enough to address the infrastructure backlogs hampering trade and regional economic integration World Bank chief economist for Africa Shantayanan Devarajan said. Devarajan is in South Africa to consult with policy makers and civil society organisations on a new World Bank strategy for Africa.

We have seen great tragedy these days where around 80 Eritrean asylum seekers who departed to claim asylum in Italy, perished in the sea. Only five of them survived to tell the tragedy. They floated on the deep seas for more than 20 days on 12- meter rubber boat with no rescue.

Five years ago, the Commission for Africa argued that supporting the continent’s quest for growth and development was not only a moral imperative but also enlightened self-interest. As the finance ministers of the Group of 20 leading nations meet this week, Nicholas Stern argues for the need to recognise that the futures of the rich world and Africa are ever more closely intertwined.

CIDA funding to the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), Canada’s pre-eminent coalition to end global poverty, is in doubt. A critical and well-respected voice for the world’s poor risks being silenced if funding to CCIC is cut off. CCIC’s three-year contract with CIDA ended on March 31, 2010. Two months into a three-month temporary extension of CCIC’s contract and no word yet from CIDA on the contract’s renewal. In July, CCIC will start operating with no CIDA funds.

This report is the number "80" of series of economic and social rights that addresses some of the manifestations of violence against women in legislation and the Egyptian laws, which takes place as a result of the gap between law making and enforcement. The report contains an analysis of this gap and the reasons that led to the occurrence.

The application for the 2011 session of the annual Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) at Columbia University is now available. We would like to ask you to disseminate this announcement to eligible human rights activists and organizations. The application is available . This web-based format is the only version of the 2011 application.

On January 8, while Angola was hosting the African Cup of Nations, the country made worldwide headlines after a deadly attack on the Togolese national soccer team, which left a coach and a journalist dead. With international attention turning to the story, a shroud of state censorship and self-censorship by the Angolan media obscured the factual circumstances of the attack and its aftermath

The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades

A 12-year-old Ghanaian student Kwabena Asumadu has been crowned the national winner of the Doodle 4 Google 'Love Football' competition. The competition was for students to design a Google Doodle - the interpretation of the Google logo, around the theme 'Love Football'. Asumadu is now one step closer to being a global winner and will have his logo uploaded on the Google Ghana homepage - - for a day. For his prize he would receive a laptop, dongle, printer and a framed copy of his winning doodle.

Giving developing countries a bigger say in global economic governance could help the world economy recover more quickly from the crisis, the World Bank said on Friday. The Group of 20, bringing together the world's top developed and emerging economies has emerged as the leading global forum, representing over 80 percent of the world's economic activity, but over 170 poorer countries feel left out.