Countries across the globe have been challenged to better manage and conserve the forests in their areas as one of the commitments to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). According to a comprehensive forest review released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the rate of deforestation has slowed over the last 10 years, but each year an area roughly the size of Costa Rica is still destroyed.

In this week's roundup of emerging actors news, CNN pioneers its Africa business programme Market Place Africa, China-Nigeria trade ties continue to strengthen, 60 Indian firms express interest in Zambia for investing, and BRICs unlikely to push for a new global reserve currency.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday in Nairobi met and held talks with Kofi Annan, a member of the Panel of Eminent African Personalities and Chief mediator at the 2008 peace talks which ended the post-election violence in Kenya. Annan, former United Nations secretary-general, also met Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

An evening of prayers and chants held in the Togolese capital, Lome, by supporters of the umbrella opposition group, Republican Front for Revival and Change (FRAC), was violently dispersed by the security forces using tear gas.

Malawi has said Africa needs to focus on regional infrastructural development, in energy and water resources management if the continent is to realise its true growth potential, PANA reported from here Wednesday.

South African President Jacob Zuma urged Western nations to lift targeted sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his allies, saying they were undermining the nation’s coalition government. “We don’t need these sanctions now,” Zuma told lawmakers in Parliament in Cape Town.

An Islamic court in Nigeria has banned a rights group from hosting debates on the Twitter and Facebook websites on the use of amputations as a punishment. The court, in the northern city of Kaduna, backed a case brought by a pro-Sharia group arguing that the forums would mock the Sharia system.

The Ethiopian government is waging a coordinated and sustained attack on political opponents, journalists, and rights activists ahead of the May 2010 elections, Human Rights Watch said in a report. On May 23, 2010, Ethiopians will vote in the first parliamentary elections in Ethiopia since 2005, when the post-election period was marred by controversy and bloodshed.

They endure stigma, discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but Ugandan women living with disabilities say the greatest challenge facing them centres on their reproductive health. "In addition to the impacts of physical, mental, intellectual and sensor impairments, we are double discriminated (against), first as women, and then as disabled," said Beatrice Guzu, executive secretary of the National Organisation of Women with Disabilities in Uganda.

The efforts of Central African nations to consolidate peace and further development are being thwarted by weapons trafficking, top United Nations officials warned today, calling on Member States to do all they can to eradicate this scourge. “Central Africa is awash with illicit weapons – exacerbating inter-communal violence, increasing cross-border crime and threatening ongoing peace and national reconciliation processes,” Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said in her remarks to a debate in the Security Council.

Somali government forces have destroyed some 500 homes near the main airport in Mogadishu, capital of the lawless and war-torn nation, Somalia, because of security concerns. About 1000 displaced people, who were demolished their houses on Thursday, are homeless and sitting the open in the Afisoyoni villag

Egyptian state security prevented activists from holding a symbolic "trial" of Egypt's ruling party on Thursday, using force to disperse those who tried to resist, activists said. Security men in civilian clothes beat some of the activists who gathered to hold the event at a lawyers' club south of Cairo.

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Cote d'lvoire, Choi Young-jin, has appealed for peace this week in the run-up to the country's first presidential elections since 2005.The UN mission chief made the appeal in a statement on Thursday.

Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, chairperson of the opposition United Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi) and candidate in Rwanda's August presidential election, was on Wednesday prevented from leaving the country after she was questioned for several hours at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID)for alleged comments likely to stir up hatred and genocide, police sources told PANA in Kigali.

Nigeria's Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has sent the list of the first batch of 25 ministerial-nominees to the upper legislative chamber, the Senate, for clearance. vOut of the 25, three served as Ministers while four were Ministers of State in t he 42-member cabinet which was dissolved 17 March.

The police have for the past two weeks arrested scores of MDC supporters across the country on trumped-up charges in a worrying partisan move as cases of Zanu PF-instigated violence against MDC members are on the increase.

A group of international campaigners has launched an online petition against Ethiopia's huge Gibe III dam project. The group wants to put pressure on Western donors and banks not to fund the dam, saying it would destroy the livelihoods of some 500,000 people.

This 59-page report documents the myriad ways in which the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has systematically punished opposition supporters. Since the 2005 polls, the party has used its near-total control of local and district administrations to undermine opponents' livelihoods through withholding services such as agricultural inputs, micro-credit, and job opportunities.

HIV-positive Bupe Mwamba, 22, lies next to her newborn baby girl at the rural clinic she just gave birth in and wonders if her baby is HIV-positive too. She has been for counselling throughout her antenatal check-ups and knows there is a chance her baby girl may be HIV-negative. But it still does not eliminate her fears and anxieties.

Three Ugandan journalists were arrested by the Police over an alleged seditious story concerning the Kasubi tomb fire. The three, Dalton Kwesiga, Ben Byaruhanga and Johnson Taremwa work for The Red Pepper. Their troubles stem from a story titled ‘Police quizzes Mengo ministers over Kasubi fire’.