The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor says he will request ICC judges to open an investigation into Kenya's post-election violence. Luis Moreno-Ocampo made the comments after meeting Kenya's president and prime minister, who said they would co-operate with the ICC probe.

"All shall call." This phrase was popularised by Pallo Jordan in the mid 1990's, and became a catchphrase of telecommunications transformation in South Africa. It echoed the idea espoused by Jordan at the Plenipotentiary meeting of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that access to telecommunications was a right, not a privilege.

A network of African civil society and international organizations today called upon African Union (AU) states to use the AU's upcoming session about the International Criminal Court (ICC) to promote the court's ability to prosecute the world's worst crimes fairly and effectively.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced that the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, a former senior official of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who has been charged with war crimes, will begin in April 2010. Mr. Bemba, the former Congolese Vice President, faces charges for alleged crimes committed in the Central African Republic (CAR) between October 2002 and March 2003, including rape, murder and pillaging.

The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro – the highest mountain in Africa – may soon be falling on bare ground following a study showing that its ice cap is destined to disappear entirely within 20 years, due largely to climate change. The vast ice fields of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are melting at a faster pace than at any time over the past 100 years and at this rate they will be gone completely within two decades or even earlier according to one of the world's leading glaciologists.

On October 30, the internet opened a new chapter in its long march towards internationalization. It entered a new era of multilingual globalization. Up to now, web addresses could only be displayed using Latin characters. This increasingly makes little sense as more than half of the world's 1.6 billion internet users employ non-Latin scripts including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, and Russian.

Of the many proposals on how to combat poverty in Africa, the United Nations' International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is championing what must be one of the simplest - make it cheaper and easier for migrants to send money home.

In this week’s [mp3] In this week’s labour news roundup, tens of thousands of Nigerian citizens protest over the government’s plan to deregulate the downstream oil sector, five Zimbabwean farm workers have been shot and injured with rubber bullets on a farm in the Chinhoyi area, and a South African mineworker is killed. This bulletin is part of a partnership between Worker’s World Media Productions and Pambazuka News that seeks to highlight labour issues affecting Africa’s workers.

A Tanzanian court has sentenced four men to death by hanging for the murder of a 50-year-old albino man. Local media late on Monday reported the case, which brings to seven the number of people sentenced for murdering albinos following the first conviction of three people in September.

A first-ever outbreak of dengue fever in Cape Verde, already causing four deaths and infecting 9,000 persons, has caused panic on the archipelago. Tomorrow, everybody is urged to kill mosquitoes instead of going to work, and both the police and army are sent out to root out the disease.

The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) pays humble tribute to Comrade Ronnie Press, one of the Movements great heroes, one of whom may not always be spoken of, but one whose contribution to the National Liberation of South Africa, the working class and the international Communist and trade union movement will be a shining example for generations to come. He was by nature and profession a teacher one who imparted his brilliant intellect and scientific knowledge amongst the working class and student community as a whole.

Rwandan journalist, Amani Ntakandi of the bi-monthly Rus hyashya published in Kigali, has been released by the people's courts, 'Gacaca', of Mbazi in the south of the country, after serving a three-month sentence for "illegally" reporting on the proceedings of these courts.

Seeking to minimise the perceived damage done to it by the recent conviction of one of its top members, Bode George, Nigeria's ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has endorsed the conviction. George, a former deputy national chairman of the PDP, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment, along with five others, last week for a contract scam while he served as the chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

A senior commander of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army rebels has surrendered in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Charles Arop, believed to be behind a brutal attack last Christmas, handed himself in to the Ugandan military.

Shell’s commencement of a new gas flare at a time when the routine gas flaring has received global condemnation, and with the full knowledge that gas flaring is an illegal activity in Nigeria, is seen by the locals as an act of impunity and total disregard for their health. Gas flaring is a major contributor of global warming greenhouse gases. The commence this destructive activity a few weeks from the climate negotiations in Copenhagen indicates Shell’s disregard for the welfare of humanity and our climate.

Three quarters of people in South Sudan have no access to medical care, and 10 percent of children there and in Darfur die before their first birthday, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official has said.

The United Nations has begun to parachute food aid into isolated areas of conflict-ridden southern Sudan with the aim of reaching more than 155,000 people cut off from road access by heavy rainfall, the World Food Programme (WFP) has announced.

Oil firms operating in Gabon will be banned from flaring gas in 2010, the government said in a statement. Exports of unprocessed timber will also be banned next year in an effort to increase employment by making logging companies mill and add value to wood locally, according to a statement issued after a cabinet meeting late on Thursday.

Moroccan courts on Friday (October 30th) convicted two journalists of desecrating the national flag and failing to show proper respect for a member of the royal family. Editor Taoufik Bouachrine and caricaturist Khalid Gueddar were put on trial after the daily Akhbar al-Youm published a cartoon of Prince Moulay Ismail's wedding in its September 27th edition.

Uganda is considering an anti-counterfeit bill which analysts say will impair the country’s ability to import and export cheap but effective generic medicines. Activists fear that the bill, once enacted, will deny Ugandans access to safe, effective, quality and affordable generic medication which currently forms the bulk of Uganda’s medicine imports.