Experts from around the world are trying to attract attention to deadly but little-known illnesses, such as Chagas disease, visceral leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness, that have been neglected by the pharmaceutical industry. So-called neglected tropical diseases, which also include malaria, dengue fever and schistosomiasis, in conjunction with tuberculosis are responsible for 11.4 percent of the global burden of illness, but only 1.3 percent of the 1,556 new drugs registered between 1975 and 2004 were specifically developed for these diseases.

The second continental congress of the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), the African regional organisation of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), has been concluded Sunday in Harare, Zimbabwe, on a call for a stronger and more united journalist movement in the Africa.

Sierra Leoneans have woken up for the first time after ten years without the United Nations radio. The UN radio which was set up in 2000 played a significant role in consolidating peace in the West Africa nation. Until last night it was the 'most trusted' independent broadcaster with a country wide transmission.

Thousands of construction workers are being laid off in Angola because the government has failed to settle over $2 billion in arrears to foreign firms rebuilding the African nation, a union leader said on Thursday. Francisco Jacinto, leader of the country's largest union CGSILA, said the arrears and a slowdown in the construction sector were the two main reasons behind the lay-offs.

Mumia Abu Jamal’s birthday is on April 24 and ‘we would like to celebrate the whole month of April with a gigantic Freedom Birthday Remembrance for him’, write his friends and family. Please join all who love and admire Mumia by avalanching him through the month of April with birthday wishes. ‘Mumia has already done 32 years and is still on death row because of prosecutorial misconduct. Yet he is innocent! Act now before it is too late.’

A group of army officers in Guinea-Bissau is reported to have detained the chief of staff and the prime minister. Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior was set free after several hours. The whereabouts of President Malam Bacai Sanha are unknown. Heavily armed troops attempted to gain access to the UN headquarters, where a former head of the navy had fled.

The rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others, including at least 80 children, during a previously unreported four-day rampage in the Makombo area of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2009, Human Rights Watch said in a report.

Human rights organisations have been demanding an independent inquiry into the death of a Nigerian asylum seeker died while being deported and a stop to all forced repatriations. Switzerland's sixth deportation flight of 2010, scheduled for the evening of Mar. 17 with 16 Nigerians on board, never took off. Among the prisoners was Alex Uzowulu, 29, whose asylum claim had been previously rejected.

When Mbuyiselo Botha decided to take the African National Congress League President, Julius Malema, to court for hate speech against women, he was confident from the start that the case had merit. But he also knew that this would be the most challenging test of his 15 years of gender activism.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on Ethiopia to lift all restrictions on Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts after the government summarily jammed the network's broadcasts in Amharic, amid accusations of peddling "destabilising propaganda".

A Nigerian civil rights group said Wednesday it would appeal an Islamic court order to shut down its chat forums on Facebook and Twitter which criticize the practice of Islamic law in northern states.

Uganda expects to stop importing fuel in five years when the east African nation anticipates to start fully producing petroleum products from a planned refinery, a senior government official said on Thursday.

Morocco plans to train schoolchildren to help lure other youngsters into the classroom under a government initiative aimed at boosting enrolment rates. Some 500,000 schoolchildren will be trained to take part in the "Child for Child" census-taking programme that the Department of Education launched on Thursday (March 25th). Students aged 6-15 will work with teachers and officials in April and May to encourage youth who are not enrolled in school to return to their studies.

Scientists say they have identified a potential treatment for sleeping sickness, a killer disease that infects about 60,000 people in Africa a year. British and Canadian experts say drugs could attack an enzyme the parasite causing the illness needs to survive.

A majority of a pre-trial chamber of International Criminal Court (ICC) judges today approved the ICC prosecutor's request to open an investigation into Kenya's 2007 post-election violence, Human Rights Watch said. The Kenyan inquiry is the first investigation begun by the prosecutor acting on his own initiative.

While agricultural research has made massive strides over the years in helping the world produce more food from the same amount of land, around one in six people, the 1.02 billion hungry, have not noticed.

High-quality education is the foundation for success and growth. There is a need for empowered teachers, strong school leaders, better curricula, and the ability for students to connect with one another and the rest of the world, says Anthony Salcito, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector – Education, Microsoft.

Dozens of farmers, veterinarians and farm workers have been infected with Rift Valley fever in South Africa, and at least two people have died, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has reported.

There have been numerous reports from human rights organisations and from the MDC-T of an upsurge of violence in rural areas such as in Mutasa North, Mudzi, Bindura and Masvingo, by ZANU PF sponsored thugs. On Wednesday the pressure group Restoration of Human Rights (ROHR) reported that terror had broken out in Muzarabani, resulting in 16 families fleeing their homes.

Experts have called on the government to establish an agency that will coordinate and manage ICT activities so as to enhance the sector's growth. The call was made during at an ICT summit, which was held in Dar es Salaam to take stock of digital development in Tanzania and explore ways to catapult the sector to a new level. The experts and other stakeholders said the proposed body will also assume regulatory functions in order to create a level playing field in the fast growing industry.