At least 13 people have been killed in a southern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by what aid groups say is an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. Francois Dumont, the spokesman for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), said tests had so far confirmed the virus in four people and all of those had survived.

Congolese villagers are forming self-defence groups to protect homes and families from Ugandan LRA rebels. LRA rebels have killed 567 people and displaced 115,000 in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo's Oriental province since September, U.N. refugee agency UNHCR says. Attacks surged after Ugandan forces spearheaded an anti-LRA offensive in December.

UN Special Envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, has stressed the need for continued political and material support to bring durable peace to the DRC. In an address to the council on Thursday, Obasanjo said: “The DRC, the region, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and I will need your support (UN Security Council) and that of your governments in this peace process.”

The United Nations is continuing to rush assistance to help those uprooted by clashes in the war-torn far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including victims of violence at the hands of the notorious Ugandan rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

The latest round of United Nations-supported Government-rebel political negotiations seeking to quell the violence engulfing the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continued today, with the co-chair reporting slow but steady progress.

Angola has increased border restrictions with the Democratic Republic of Congo where an outbreak of the highly contagious and deadly Ebola virus is believed to have infected 40 people and killed 13. State-owned daily Jornal de Angola said migratory movements between part of Angola's eastern province of Moxico and the DRC were suspended, days after authorities closed the border of its Lunda Norte province with the DRC.

The UN refugee agency on Tuesday condemned an attack on a vehicle carrying staff of an Italian aid agency that left one person dead and another injured in the strife-torn Congolese province of North Kivu. "UNHCR deplores the cold-blooded murder of a staff member of the Italian NGO, Voluntary Association for International Service (AVSI)," a spokesperson said, adding that armed men had on Monday ambushed the vehicle near Rutshuru town, which is located some 70 kilometres north of the provincial capital, Goma.

Authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo have arrested eight foreign businessmen, accusing them of embezzling around $40 million intended for public works projects, the justice minister said on Friday. The men, including Belgian, Italian, French and Lebanese nationals, had received public funds to build roads and schools after winning tenders in 2006.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said it is very concerned about reports that rebels are putting pressure on those displaced by the deadly fighting in the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to return to their villages.

Actor-director Ben Affleck and Rolling Stone singer Mick Jagger have released a short film to help raise $23 million for United Nations efforts to pay for clean water and emergency aid kits for 250,000 people driven from their homes by renewed fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The film – “Gimme Shelter” – set to the Rolling Stones’ song of the same name, was shot last month in North Kivu province, epicentre of the latest surge in fighting.

United Nations-backed talks between the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a main rebel group, aimed at finding a peaceful resolution to the strife-ridden country’s brutal armed conflict, resumed today after a week-long break. This round of negotiations is slated to end on 20 December when the two sides are set to adopt a framework for substantive dialogue attempting to end the conflict that has been plaguing the eastern part of the vast DRC.

The United Nations published a report by its expert panel that supports what the Congolese people have known and been saying for the longest. Now that the world has acknowledged the nature of the 12 year conflict in the Congo, we may finally start to see policy prescriptions that reflect the truth and include what the Congolese have argued for some time now.

Reviewing the efforts of the acclaimed US playwright Eve Ensler and the former UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis to sustain international attention on the DRC crisis, Stephen Leahy highlights the centrality of women and girls’ rights in the ongoing conflict in the east of the country.

The close-down of several copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) southern Katanga Province has now developed into "an economic crisis", according to UN sources. According to the UN's peacekeeping mission in the DRC, MONUC, has expressed its concern over "the current economic crisis in south-eastern DR Congo’s Katanga province, which has led several mining companies to stop their operations."

Since the November 2004 murder of Frank Kangundu, journalist with the Congolese daily ‘La Référence Plus’, and his wife, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has entered a sad cycle of killings of media professionals. The most recent target was Didace Namujimbo, a journalist with Radio Okapi, who was shot in the head by unidentified assailants near his home in Ndendere, in South Kivu’s Ibanda county (eastern DRC) on Nov. 22, 2008.

Forty year-old Angelique reveals a gunshot wound in her back to women in the Keyshero Medical centre, while her six-year-old daughter reaches up to touch it. Angelique (her name has been changed) and her family were attacked in their village in November 2007 when men dressed in police uniforms broke into their house at night, looted it, and forced her family into the forest.

We remain extremely concerned for the safety of the displaced Congolese population in Kibati as the civilian character of these two UNHCR-run camps north of Goma is continually violated. In another incident early this morning, two young girls were shot. A 5-year-old died and a 7-year-old girl is fighting for her life in a local hospital. Our staff also reported this morning that another woman was raped by armed men in the vicinity of Kibati camp yesterday evening.

Talks aimed at ending the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are encountering serious difficulties, the UN mediator says. Olusegun Obasanjo said this was because Gen Laurent Nkunda's rebel negotiators lacked the authority to make decisions.

A web-based reporting tool is allowing Africans caught up in political unrest to report incidents of killing, violence and displacement. The website is called Ushahidi, which means ''testimony'' in Swahili and was first developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout. Ushahidi is now being used in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to report on the war that has torn the country apart for the last 15 years.

Marie trembles as she tells me about the day when Jean-Pierre Bemba's Congolese troops came to her town. "We heard gun-shots as they went from house to house," she says in Bossangoa in the Central African Republic. She struggles to contain her emotions as she recounts how she and her husband cowered next to their children as the awful sounds outside their home drew closer.