The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, a nonprofit that sponsors and produces award-winning international journalism, has launched a new interactive site focused on maternal mortality issues, Dying for Life. This multimedia exhibit includes photo essays, videos and dispatches from Guinea Bissau, India, Mexico, Ethiopia and Nigeria. The centre is also partnering with the writers' site Helium to sponsor a writing contest about maternal health. The aim is to foster in-depth engagement with this important global issue. Join the global conversation by engaging with the journalists, and sharing your own stories about maternal health and its impact on your community.

Renewed fighting between Government troops and armed opposition groups have displaced over 17,000 people from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, over the past month, with more than 14,300 fleeing in the last two weeks alone, the United Nations refugee agency reported. This brings to 200,000 the number of Somalis estimated to have been uprooted since the beginning of this year, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

South Africa has invited Sudan's Omar al-Bashir to the continent's first World Cup along with the rest of Africa's leadership, but will arrest him if he takes up the invitation, President Jacob Zuma said. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes. He rejects the charges of ordering mass murder, rape and torture in the western Darfur region.

Tensions between the European Union and Africa have once again erupted, with Namibia accusing the Brussels elite of resorting to bullying tactics in trade negotiations. In official statements, the European Commission -- the EU's executive -- has consistently argued that the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) it has been hoping to conclude with 47 African countries will bring tangible benefits to the continent. African governments have proven far less enthusiastic about these trade liberalisation accords, with some arguing that they are fomenting divisions among neighbours.

Research by the Berne Declaration and Natural Justice reveals that five recent patent applications by Nestlé on the use of Rooibos and Honeybush are in conflict with South African Law and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This second bio piracy case in South Africa in less than a year again demonstrates how big corporations neglect their obligations to seek prior informed consent and to share benefits when using genetic resources from the developing countries as obliged by the CBD.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the University of Ghana are pleased to announce the international symposium ”The Dream, The Reality: Re-assessments of African Independence”, to be held in Accra, Ghana, from 27th to 29th of September 2010. The symposium constitutes the central event in the inaugural issue of the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Intellectual & Cultural Festival Week, a bi-annual event to be held under the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies.

Burundi's district elections, seen as a test of the tiny African country's stability ahead of presidential elections in June, met international standards, European observers said on Thursday. Monday's elections were the first of a series of polls in which the coffee-producer will also vote for representatives to parliament and its next president. District polls are often an indicator of how the rest of the vote will go.

Fatima Yadik, a mother of 12 and grandmother of 18, recently settled in the Central African Republic town of Yaloké after 60 years with her nomadic community. Her camp of Peuhl nomads was attacked by bandits who killed all the men and stole their cattle. Peuhl people are often targeted by bandits because of the relative wealth of their livestock. Fleeing to safety, Ms. Yadik and her family joined the growing number of nomadic peoples across Africa’s interior who are escaping poverty and insecurity in the countryside in favour of life in towns and cities.

Experts at the 47th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR), which ended Thursday in Banjul, the Gambian capital, have said that the Commission's greatest handicap was its inability to perform its mandate of protecting human rights in Africa. Reine Alapini-Gansou, Chairperson of the Commission, stated that at the Banjul session, participants adopted new rules which seek to enhance human rights services in such a way that they would complement the activities of the African Court on Human and People's Rights.

Ethiopia's ruling party swept all the parliamentary seats in Sunday's elections and appeared to head back to a single party era. The opposition coalition, Medrek, won a single seat in capital, Addis Ababa, in a race over 547 seats in the House. Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and its allied political parties won all the 533 seats out of the 536 seats declared when the Ethiopian National Electoral Board (NEBE) released the provisional results.

Zimbabwe has banned all exports of diamonds until a monitor from the Kimberley Process regulator approves the sale of gems from a field plagued by human rights abuses, the mines minister said Thursday. "I have suspended all diamond exports from Zimbabwe with immediate effect until the issue of Kimberley Process certification scheme has been sorted out," mines minister Obert Mpofu said in the state-run Herald newspaper.

French authorities have arrested a Rwandan doctor accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide. Eugene Rwamucyo has been wanted by Interpol since 2006, and was dismissed from his job in a hospital in northern France last month. Rwandan authorities, who allege Dr Rwamucyo committed war crimes during the genocide, welcomed the arrest.

A group of 124 organizations from more than 25 African countries have released a declaration calling on African governments to advance accountability for grave international crimes at the review conference for the International Criminal Court (ICC). The conference, which will take place in Kampala, Uganda from May 31 to June 11, 2010, is being convened to discuss amendments to the court's treaty.

A new ClimateWire article looks into the growing number of voices concerned about the World Bank's role in a post-Copenhagen world. The Bank's recent approval of a controversial loan to South African utility Eskom has spurred several previously reserved groups to demand reforms. BIC board member David Hunter was quoted.

The crème de la crème of Africa's media are gathering in Uganda's capital Kampala for the prestigious 2010 CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards on Saturday. Already some of the 27 finalists from 15 countries had started arriving. They include Uganda's Halima Abdallah Kisule of The EastAfrican and NTV sports reporter Leon Ssenyange.

Donors are disengaging from the fight against HIV/AIDS leaving behind millions who are still in dire need of lifesaving treatment in South Africa and other hard-hit Sub-Saharan African countries, warned Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

SAMWU has become increasingly concerned by the homophobic utterances of several national leaders on the continent over the last few years. Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Museveni in Uganda and a few others have made intolerable comments about the rights of consenting adults to engage in a same sex relationship. One has to ask what is it exactly that irks these ‘revolutionary’ leaders? What are they afraid of? However recent events in Malawi have surpassed even these levels of ignorance and prejudice.

In the May edition of the , Tanzania grants 162,000 Burundians citizenship, Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees feel abandoned in Guinea, New United Kingdom government pledges end to immigration detention of children, addresses refoulement on sexual orientation or gender-based refugee claims, and Refugee Law Project in Kampala, Uganda, opens internet and computer facility for clients.

The Commonwealth Games, which begin in Delhi on 3 October, are already surrounded by concerns over security. Far more worrying than the possible threat to a few thousand privileged visiting foreigners, however, is a new report by the Housing and Land Network, an arm of the global movement Habitat International Coalition, suggesting that by the time the Games begin about 140,000 families will have been evicted from their homes to clear the space for the lavish facilities now compulsory for such events.

In this weeks roundup of emerging actors new, African Development Bank seeks to triple the amount of funds it has available to invest in roads and power plants, China's short-term boost could become a long-term threat to Africa, India backs Africa for Security Council, and The China-Africa Development Fund (CAD Fund to boost footprint in Africa.