“You cannot divorce food from fuel, they are completely interlinked. One-hundred bags of food is useless without firewood.” For millions of families around the world, cooking fuel is a critical, daily concern, with serious health and safety implications. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put this issue in the spotlight when she announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which aims to provide 100 million fuel - efficient stoves to people in developing countries by 2020. These stoves will make a crucial difference in the lives of the people who receive them - especially those who have been displaced by armed conflict and natural disasters.

President Robert Mugabe wants Zimbabwe's power-sharing government to end next year, saying the unity pact was only meant to last two years, state media has reported. 'Some will say let us negotiate and give it another life. I am reluctant because part of the things happening [in the inclusive government] are absolutely foolish and stupid,' Mugabe said in the Herald newspaper.

The emergence of a new meningitis vaccine, rather than a large-scale outbreak of the disease, has prompted the current vaccination drive across West Africa. Health officials say the vaccine marks a 'revolution' in preventing the highly contagious and fatal disease. Health workers in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger - the three countries selected for introduction of the vaccine - are preparing for country-wide campaigns set for December, having just completed a limited pilot phase.

Hundreds of people from different walks of life - from young schoolchildren to army officials - are planting trees across East Africa in the latest activities to be registered under Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign (BTC) run by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Zambian police have arrested two Chinese coal mine managers for attempted murder after they allegedly shot and injured 12 local workers. The miners staged a demonstration on Friday to protest against poor working conditions and wages at the Chinese-run Collum Coal mine, in the southern town of Sinazongwe. The Chinese managers allegedly opened fire at the protesters because they felt threatened.

Upcoming international climate talks will be 'a total flop', according to Africa's leading spokesperson on climate change. Neither this year's talks in Cancun, Mexico, nor the ones in South Africa next year, will deliver a deal with set targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction, said Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia and coordinator of the Committee of Ten African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change. His statements have provoked anger from some critics who see them as undermining the African Union's stance on climate change.

A number of central African countries overwhelmed by the brutal attacks and mounting regional destabilization caused by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have established a comprehensive plan to combat the rebel group. Ministers from Uganda, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic agreed Friday in a meeting in Bangui, the capital of the latter, to create a joint military task force, centre of operations, and border patrol capacity, all to be supervised by a representative from the African Union.

The Global Media Monitoring Project is the only international project that gives an idea of the gender bias of the news media. In the latest GMMP, conducted on November 10 2009, the internet news media was also analysed. The survey looked at 76 national news sites from 16 countries, and eight international news sites. Women's prescence in cyberspace news is a reflection of their presence in 'traditional' news, with a couple of caveats.

The Ugandan Rolling Stone tabloid has published an article entitled ‘100 Pictures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak’ calling for the ‘hanging of homos’ in Uganda in its issue of 2 to 9 October, 2010, Vol.1, No. 5. The article shows pictures of some of the 100 alleged homosexuals and other human rights activists, alongside their names and a description of their professional jobs and private life, including where they live or work. The article also calls on the government of Uganda to take strong action against them.

A delegation of Indian political and business leaders was due in the East African Community (EAC) region this week with new incentives to increase Delhi’s presence in the region as the Asian giant moves to eat into the presence of China and Europe, the Indian government announced. Senior officials from 187 Indian companies will be participating in the ‘Namaskar Africa’ and ‘India-East Africa Business Forum’ events in Nairobi, opening on October 14. Representatives from the EAC countries will also be there for a preview of what India has to offer.

Malawian vice president Joyce Banda has called for tolerance towards homosexuality, at a meeting hosted by the Inter-Faith AIDS Association (MIAA) held in Blantyre, Malawi, on 29 September this year. Banda made the call when she officially opened a Religious Leader’s Policy Advocacy Conference in Blantyre, stating that same sex practices are reality in Malawi and that religious leaders need be tolerant on such issues in order to fight HIV and AIDS.

The launch of the Decade of the African Woman from 2010-2020 happens this week in Nairobi as delegates at another women's event in Johannesburg have noted that African women continue to be left out of the media. At the first day of the Fourth Annual Gender Links Gender and Media Summit in Johannesburg, the results of the Gender and Media Progress Study (GMPS) were highlighted and the lack of progress since the 2003 Baseline Study was widely discussed.

Social interaction between host community members and refugees are taking place within the camps at a significant scale, according to a September 2010 study entitled 'Socio-economic and Environmental Impacts of Dadaab Refugee Camps on Host Communities'. One of the findings of the study is that refugees are seen as getting the better deal as international humanitarian standards are applied to refugees but not to host communities.

The latest round of talks between north and south Sudan over the future of the oil-producing Abyei region has failed to reach an agreement. The issue stands as a key hurdle ahead of referendums in the country, and according to the north's National Congress party (NCP) and the south's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), 'serious efforts and many productive discussions, [the delegations] did not succeed in reaching agreement on the eligibility criteria for voters in the Abyei Area referendum'.

Only a handful of African governments have so far pledged financial commitment to a planned US$600 million endowment fund to support the activities of the fledgling African Network for Drugs and Diagnostic Innovations (ANDI) initiative - and none have yet paid up. ANDI aims to be the first pan-African health research and development (R&D) network, tackling Africa's diseases with home-grown drugs and diagnostics.

Faced with the woes of the global economic crisis, an increasing number of Moroccan expatriates are coming back home. Meanwhile, the government is intensifying effort to aid the community abroad as well as help them maintain ties with their home country. The number of Moroccans living abroad (MRE) that have decided to return home is up 8 per cent year over year.

New analysis shows populations of tropical species are plummeting and humanity's demands on natural resources are sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain, reveals the 2010 edition of WWF’s Living Planet Report - the leading survey of the planet’s health. The Ecological Footprint, one of the indicators used in the report, shows that our demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966 and we’re using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support our activities. If we continue living beyond the Earth’s limits, by 2030 we'll need the equivalent of two planets' productive capacity to meet our annual demands.

Jean Gregoire Sagbo is Russia's newly elected councilman of Novozavidovo, a rural community about 65 miles north of Moscow. Russia is still entrenched in the enigma of racism and plagued with systemic violence. But among the 10,000 residents here, 48-year-old Sagbo, though an immigrant from Benin, is perceived as a Russian who cares about his adopted hometown, reports

Scientists are failing Africa in its attempts to adapt to climate change, a conference was told this week. They spend too much time collecting data and attending conferences, and not enough time providing practical solutions that local people can implement, according to Anthony Nyong, manager of the Compliance and Safeguard Division at the African Development Bank.

I'm a historian at Yale University in the USA who just happened upon your online news service, and who has a special request. I'm writing a history of something called the World Youth Festival, a Soviet-sponsored event which met 13 times between 1947 and 1989. My research has taken me to Russia, Europe and across the USA. But sadly, I have not yet made it to look through African archives or interview African participants. I therefore would be especially grateful if you would put a call out to your readership in search of anyone who might be willing to speak with me about their experiences at the Festival, or who perhaps has written material (letters, diaries, memoirs) that they'd be willing to scan and share with me.

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