The African Union has began a 90-day countdown to the International Peace Day, when all guns in the continent’s conflict hot-spots are expected to go silent. But, just for a day. The countdown began on Tuesday and is special for the political bloc given its declaration of 2010 as “the year of peace and security.”

A journalist working for a private newspaper has been shot dead in front of his house in the Rwandan capital. Witnesses say Jean Leonard Rugambage, the acting editor of Umuvugizi newspaper, was fired on by two men who then fled in a car. The authorities had recently suspended the paper, prompting it to start publishing online instead.

A court to mainly try suspected pirates has opened in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, funded by international donors. Pirates based in neighbouring Somalia have made the Gulf of Aden one of the world's most dangerous shipping lanes.

The Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, has been ruthlessly attacking civilians in the Central African Republic, or CAR, since February 2008. Attacks continued unabated in the country's isolated southeastern Haut Mbomou and Mbomou prefectures, and surged during the first three months of 2010. Despite this deadly track record, LRA violence in CAR, one of the world's poorest countries, has been badly under-reported and gone largely unnoticed. T

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has begun a scheme to boost about 70,000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia by buying the food they produce to use in the agency’s operations in the Horn of Africa country. Through the Purchase for Progress initiative, which is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WFP plans to buy an estimated 126,000 tons of food from local farmers over the next five years.

South African police were investigating a possible conspiracy yesterday after making six arrests in connection with the attempted assassination of an exiled former Rwandan army chief of staff. Lt-General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, a dissident Rwandan military commander who fled the country earlier this year, is recovering in a Johannesburg hospital after an attempt on his life that his wife has blamed on the president of Rwanda. The authorities in Kigali have denied any knowledge of a plot to kill General Nyamwasa.

Rich countries were set to figure out how to catch up on their missed aid promises and find new ways to help the world's poorest nations at a time when their own budgets are squeezed. The Group of Eight (G8) nations meet in Huntsville, Ontario, north of Toronto, short by an estimated $18 billion on a 2005 pledge to raise their combined aid to the poorest countries by at least $50 billion.

Leading up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, reports have come out alleging that South African authorities had made efforts to hide the homeless population to make areas seem more welcoming to tourists. Now, as the games go on, one organization is taking a stand to raise awareness about the negative impact of the World Cup on the poor and homeless.

The Intersessional Meeting of the Kimberley Process (KP), presided over by Israel as Chair of the KP, concluded on June 24th. On the agenda of the meeting were a number of initiatives relating to the on-going work of the KP and to the consolidation of the process such the creation of an office for administration and support and the establishment of a Working Group on Trade Facilitation. The center of attention, however, was the KP minimum standards implementation in the Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe.

"Africa is now facing the same type of long-term food deficit problem that India faced in the early 1960s", says a paper by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US-based think-tank. In the early 1960s India faced a major food crisis. African countries are not spending enough on agriculture and the overall productivity of the continent has dropped since the mid-1980s, said the paper which looked at trends in public spending on agriculture in Africa.

The United Nations is prepared to support Niger to organise free and transparent elections next year, a UN delegation to the country said. Mr. Abderahamane Niang, who has just led a UN mission to Niger to evaluate its electoral needs, met with all the political stakeholders during the visit.

The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed grave concern over the recent death threat against Gambian journalist, Abdoulie John, and called for an immediate and thorough investigation into the matter. "We are gravely concerned about reports of threats against Gambian journalist Ab doulie John," said IPI Press Freedom Manager Anthony Mills, adding: "particularly since journalists in Gambia operate under fear of death, harassment and physical harm.

An ethnic Hutu opposition candidate who hoped to run for president in Rwanda has been denied the right to appear on the ballot because of charges of denying the country’s genocide, party officials said today. Victoire Ingabire returned to Rwanda in January after 16 years, a return she says she made because the country needs an open discussion to promote reconciliation.

The last of three ceremonies to rebury victims of Rwanda's 1994 genocide who were washed up on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda has taken place. Nearly 11,000 bodies thrown into rivers in Rwanda were recovered from the lake and buried by Ugandan villagers. Their bodies have now all been exhumed from different places and buried at three special memorial sites.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Nigerian Bar Association Human Rights Institute and other Nigerian human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are deeply concerned by reports of a decision by the Nigerian government to resume the execution of prison inmates. The reason given by the authorities for the resumption is to ease prison congestion.

A new International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper entitled “Mining Taxation: an application to Mali” analyses the structure of the mining taxation system in Mali. It follows the regressive path set forth by the World Bank, consisting of attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) by lowering royalty taxes in the gold mining sector at the expense of lower government revenues collected through these royalties.

The Security Council has joined the chorus of United Nations condemnation of the ambush by unknown assailants in Darfur in which three soldiers serving with the African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force were killed and a fourth was seriously wounded. More than 20 gunmen opened fire without warning on the blue helmets as they were providing security to civilian engineers working near the West Darfur village of Nertiti, according to the peacekeeping mission, known as UNAMID.

The Joint Operations Command (JOC), a state security organization only accountable to Robert Mugabe, is spearheading ZANU PF’s campaign to foist the Kariba draft on the people of Zimbabwe. Since the constitutional outreach programme started on Monday SW Radio Africa has been inundated with reports of soldiers roaming towns and districts intimidating people to toe the ZANU PF line.

A measles outbreak in Malawi has killed 82 people, mostly children, and infected more than 17,000 others, a senior health official said. Dr Storn Kabuluzi, director of preventive health services in the department of health, said efforts were being made to vaccinate those most at risk.

The 1st African Broadcast and Film Conference attracted over 200 participants from across the continent, There was a real buzz in the air as many people within Africa’s broadcast industry met for the first time. This 2nd African Broadcast and Film Conference will take place over two days (28-29 July 2010) in Kenya at the Kenyatta Centre in Nairobi. Key topics include a session on Africa’s newest generation of Free-to-Air and Pay TV Challengers, a look at how broadcasters can generate local content and a look at multi-platform strategies with social networking and blogs.