Health officials and women in Liberia say family planning options can empower girls and women to stay in school and concentrate on their businesses. But many fathers and husbands here don’t approve of the introduction of family planning. As a result, many young women are keeping their contraceptive choices secret, reports Global Press Institute.

Marking a year since ousted President Hosni Mubarak handed over power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) on 11 February 2011, university students have called for a general strike to end military rule, but their calls have yet to mobilize the masses. Osama Ahmed, spokesman of the students of the Revolutionary Socialists movement, said that the strike has not started yet, but that the group has been promoting it and establishing coordination committees to rally the people.

The intensifying competition for commercial access to the world’s remaining deposits of oil, gas and minerals brings with it a serious risk of exacerbating corruption and violent conflict. A new Global Witness report shows that in Angola and Nigeria there is a risk that complex deals struck between governments and corporations for access to natural resources could be used corruptly to benefit vested interests in these countries, rather than the citizens. The report also points to major concerns over opaque sales of mining assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo to offshore companies.

The Goethe-Institut, in co-operation with the Cape Town Book Fair and APNET, is once again offering an invitation programme for publishers from sub-Saharan African countries. The aim of this initiative is to support the participation of publishing houses from sub-Saharan African countries at the Cape Town Book Fair 2012 and to provide training and networking opportunities for publishers from this region. The grant comprises of travel costs to Cape Town, participation in a workshop on 14 June 2012, a small stand at the Cape Town Book Fair (15 – 17 June 2012) and accommodation during the workshop and the Book Fair. Costs for the transportation of books and other materials to be exhibited are not covered.

The workshop took place around three main conversations namely: peer learning from the 2011 experiences, learning on innovative strategies to employ in the future from various experts and developing a common plan for the next implementation phase. Various experts provoked conversations around various topics including building people’s power to engage governments (Firoze Manji/Pambazuka), campaigning using digital media for social advocacy (John Kipchumbah/Huduma), play for the union (Valerie Traore/NIYEL), moving from ratification to implementation (Alexandria Muhanji/SOAWR), monitoring and evaluation (Kimberley Bowman/Oxfam and Gavin Steadman/Pamoja), evidence based policy research (Marie LaBerge), how governments navigate policy through to implementation (Dr Michael Chege/Ministry of Finance, Government of Kenya) among others. Click on the link to read the full briefing.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has deployed its workers to assist some 20,000 people forced to flee fighting between government troops and rebel Tuareg groups in Mali. In a statement, made available to PANA in New York, it said that, 'most of those uprooted by the violence in the Azawad region of northern Mali that began in mid-January have fled to Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania'.

Solange Lusiku Nsimire is editor-in-chief and publisher of the independent newspaper Le Souverain in her hometown Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province in eastern Congo, one of the most troubled regions of the DRC. It is a small and crusading newspaper devoted to promotion of democracy and women in a country where abuses against democracy and against women are too often the norm. On 2 February Lusiku had been awarded a prestigious honorary doctorate degree at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), a tribute to her courage as a journalist and women's rights defender.

Côte d’Ivoire’s leprosy programme was consistently under-funded during the civil war (2002-2007) and last year’s political turmoil, say health practitioners, leading to a loss of expertise in terms of detecting or treating the disease. Not considered a public health priority, the government and donors de-prioritized the leprosy fight over the past decade, with funding dropping to 30 per cent of the original total, according to Alain de Kersabiec, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin representative for French NGO the Follereau Foundation (FRF), which helps treat existing and new leprosy patients around the country.

The 2012 World Development Report (WDR) is a watershed moment: it is the first time that the World Bank, the world’s largest and most influential development institution, has devoted its flagship publication to gender. Kate Bedford of the University of Kent argues that the report leaves the Bank failing to face up to its role in perpetuating policies that harm women, and is seriously limited in its approach to women’s movements, markets, and households.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) says it’s ready to litigate against the Gauteng Health Department should it not clear its outstanding debt to suppliers. The TAC adds that the closure of health laboratories in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal has severely impacted on people who are HIV-positive and those with TB. Chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign, Nonkosi Khumalo says the closure of health laboratory services impacts on patients on Anti-retroviral treatment (ARVs) and those who need to be tested for TB. Blood tests are not being done due to the closures. Khumalo says some health care facilities are unable to initiate new patients on ARV treatment because they can’t get their blood tests to laboratories.

Recurrent street battles between police and protesters have led the interior ministry to literally wall itself in; website Ahram Online maps the growth of these concrete curtains and the transformation of Cairo into a city of walls.

Thousands of children in Nigeria's northern Zamfara state need immediate medical treatment, while dozens of villages remain contaminated two years into the worst lead poisoning epidemic in modern history, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. According to official estimates, 400 children have died, yet environmental cleanup efforts have not even begun in numerous affected villages. Artisanal gold mines are found throughout Zamfara State, and high levels of lead in the earth and the use of rudimentary mining methods have resulted in an epidemic of lead poisoning among children, HRW said.

Burundi, one of Africa's most corrupt countries, has arrested a prominent anti-graft activist after he alleged judges were forced to pay bribes before being appointed, the campaigner's lawyer said. Faustin Ndikumana, head of the Burundi advocacy group PARCEM, told a news conference last week he had written to Justice Minister Pascal Barandagiye alleging that newly-appointed judges had told his organisation they were asked to pay between $1,000 and $1,500 in return for employment.

With global funding for HIV/AIDS on the decline, Zimbabwe's innovative AIDS levy - a 3 percent tax on income - has become a promising source of funding for the country, with a dramatic increase in revenue collected in the past two years. The levy was introduced in 1999 to compensate for declining donor support, but low salaries and the poor performance of industry meant not enough money had been collected - until recently. According to recently published audited financial statements for the year ending 31 December 2010, a total of US$20.5 million was collected in 2010 against $5.7 million the previous year.

Since 2001, the Bank has led an expansive programme to increase transparency and stimulate economic growth in the DRC’s mining sector. However, opaque sales of mining assets by state-owned mining companies led the Bank to suspend all new programmes in the DRC in late 2010. The Bank resumed lending in June last year when it judged the government to be in compliance. However, only a month later it came to light that state-owned mining companies had again been secretly selling stakes in mining operations, in one case at a sixteenth of their market price.

Greenpeace announced in Brussels recently that annual industry figures to be released early next week are expected to confirm the commercial failure of genetically modified (GM) food in Europe. Widespread public opposition and environmental concerns expressed by several European governments, scientists and farmers have made GM food a commercial flop in Europe, said Greenpeace. Only Spain saw a noticeable rise in cultivation in 2012, slightly increasing overall figures for Europe after three consecutive years of decline.

Twitter has announced a new partnership with major satellite providers to give their subscribers access to Twitter SMS, the original text-based Twitter service. According to a statement, the company has partnered with Iridium and Thuraya, the world’s two largest satellite providers, to increase the number of people that can use Twitter SMS worldwide. The company said the new partnership will help guarantee greater global access to the microblogging network.

Human Rights Watch has hailed Mali's plan to probe child labour in gold mines. 'Our research found that children in Mali start working as young as six years old. Many child laborers are denied an education or drop out of school. Some children come to the mines without their parents and suffer economic or sexual exploitation,' HRW said in a letter to the Minister of Mines, Amadou Cisse.

Nineteen people were killed in the country’s cholera outbreak last year. More than 300 people cases were reported, and an epidemic was declared on 30 September 2011. Though neighbouring countries, including Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have experienced outbreaks over the past decade, the Central African Republic had not seen a cholera case in as many as a dozen years. Today, the cholera outbreak is finally on the decline.

This Amnesty International briefing shows that the governments whose exported military equipment have over the years turned up at the site of serious human rights violations in Darfur - including Belarus, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation - continue to supply those kinds of equipment to Sudan on a regular basis. The main ‘suite’ of arms used in Darfur by all parties to the conflict has been supplied to Sudan by this key group of state suppliers almost every year since the UN Security Council (UN SC) imposed an UN arms embargo on Darfur on 30 July 2004.