Swine flu, otherwise known as the H1N1 virus, reached pandemic status, the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday. The Pan African News Agency (PANA) learnt that more than 27,000 confirmed cases had been confirmed in several continents since the first case in Mexico in April.

Growing numbers of children in Zimbabwe are turning to prostitution to survive, the charity Save the Children says. The aid agency says increasing poverty is leading girls as young as 12 to sell their bodies for as little as a packet of biscuits. It also claims that the coming football World Cup in neighbouring South Africa could soon make things worse.

Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan believes that Africa has not been affected as "profoundly" by the global economic crisis compared to other regions in the world - despite the number of Africans living in poverty having increased by 16 million in the last year and annual growth dropping from six to one percent. The 2009 annual report of the African Progress Panel (APP), headed by Annan, was launched yesterday on the first day of the 19th World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa meeting currently underway in the South African coastal city of Cape Town.

Despite some impressive gains in rebuilding Sierra Leone seven years after the end of its brutal civil war, the situation in the West African nation remains fragile, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said. “The outbreak of political violence in March of this year was a wake-up call on challenges that require urgent and continued attention,” Mr. Ban told the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission’s high-level meeting on Sierra Leone.

The four renowned academic journals of the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies are now available online and free-of-charge. Every Internet user can now access the full content of the GIGA Journal Family at no cost, which means that the reach of the journals is now significantly greater. Through the Open Access publications, the GIGA is ensuring increased exchange with academics from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

A magistrate’s court in Dakar, capital of Senegal, on June 3, 2009 suspended the circulation of June 2009 edition of L’Essentiel, a monthly current affairs magazine and ordered its seizure over headlines on the cover-page that the court claimed were an “insult” to President Abdoulaye Wade. According to the presiding magistrate the headlines: “Freemasonry: The Grand Lodge of France Conquers Senegal”, “Nine years after change, the state explodes, The Mourides are in control and Touba in suffering”, were not only insulting to President Wade but also “likely to disturb public order”.

Africa must seek to solve its own problems as the global economic crisis limits the ability of more developed countries to follow through on aid pledges, African ministers told a conference in Cairo. But officials and delegates said international bodies must make good on recent pledges to help Africa, which has been roiled by last year's sharp food price rises and fluctuating commodity markets.

Sanusha Naidu compiles a list of the top stories on Sino-African relations.

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is urging the United States to support his government despite abuses by his coalition partner, President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai plans to make his case Friday in a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama as part of a three week tour of Western countries. He also will meet Thursday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Tax cuts and incentives have been announced in Kenya intended to boost broadband and mobile take-up as a new fibre optic cable is launched. Kenya's Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta cut the 16% VAT on new phone handsets. He also allowed internet providers to offset the cost of purchasing new fibre optic bandwidth for 20 years.

"Kenya has a long history of serious human rights violations but it now has an opportunity to turn the page," said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, concluding the mission to Kenya. "Successive Kenyan governments have been good at establishing Commissions and Taskforces and poor at implementing their recommendations. This government must not repeat that pattern."

Madagascar's armed forces are on maximum alert, days after African economic bloc COMESA declared military intervention to end the island's political crisis remained an option, the government said on Friday. Armed Forces Minister Noel Rakotonandrasana told Reuters that COMESA's stance, which has drawn criticism from both France and the United Nations, had to be taken seriously.

We participants of the Civil Society Forum for the Durban Review Conference 2009 held in Geneva 17 to 19 April strongly welcome the holding of the Durban Review Conference and reaffirm our full and dedicated support for the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action (DDPA) adopted by the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

Somali Coalition for Freedom of Expression (SOCFEX) has condemned the killing of the director of radio Shabelle Muqtar Mohamed Hirabe who was murdered in Bakare market, Mogadishu by two unknown gunmen. And the journalist Ahmed Omar Hashi who was with Hirabe has been injured and took him to the hospital.

The Big Read is a campaign produced by the Global Campaign for Education and South Africa’s Public Participation in Education Network (PPEN). The movement aims to encourage public participation in education in creative ways, including The Big Read book, which is an exciting book specifically designed to campaign for education and literacy. The Big Read book is a special collection of short stories and poems that contains an amazing array of stories from inspiring people and since April this year has been read by more than 13 million people
around the world.

East African states are seeking modest economic stimulus packages, aimed at steering their countries through the global economic turbulence, and outlining plans to increase agricultural production and increase regional trade. In the fiscal plans unveiled Thursday in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, the respective finance ministers unveiled plans aimed at steering their economies through the financial crisis and avoiding adverse tax measures likely to create social backlashes.

The parties in Wiwa v. Shell have agreed to settle human rights claims charging the Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC or Shell Nigeria), and the former head of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the torture, killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and other non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta.

The speaker of the senate in Gabon has been sworn in as the country's interim head of state, following the recent death of President Omar Bongo. Under the constitution, Rose Francine Rogombe, an ally of Mr Bongo, must organise elections within 45 days. On Thursday, Mr Bongo's body will be repatriated from Spain where he had been undergoing medical treatment.

Amnesty International has released its report into the dire conditions and gross human rights abuses endured in Nairobi's informal settlements. The Unseen Majority: Nairobi's Two Million Slum Dwellers describes how half of Nairobi's population live in informal settlements, but are crammed into only 5 per cent of the city’s residential area and just 1 per cent of all land in the city.

United Nations peacekeepers are refusing to patrol a zone in eastern Congo, leaving tens of thousands of civilians vulnerable to massacres, rapes and looting by gunmen, officials and witnesses said. The civilians, under attack from Rwandan Hutu rebels, are trapped in a corner of North Kivu province Indian peacekeepers officially operate in but cannot get to due to poor roads, and Pakistani soldiers nearby refuse to enter due to procedures.