The world's oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain -- irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says. The changes could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people around the globe who rely on oceans for their livelihoods.

More than $300m (£200m) of health funding to Zambia's government is being suspended by the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It said it was concerned about alleged corruption in connection with one or more grants to the health ministry.

The Burkinabe president, Blaise Compaore, has called for the acceleration of the establishment of electronic communication infrastructure in Africa, saying this would open up new tech n ology-related opportunities and cope with the digital divide that threatens to further marginalise developing countries. The Burkinabe head of state was speaking during the opening ceremony of the Third Panafrican Forum on Best Practices in the Field of New Information and Communication Technology.

Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) is pleased to announce the release of Debating International Justice in Africa: OTJR Collected Essays, 2008-2010, designed to coincide with the ICC review conference in Kampala. Drawing together academic and practitioner contributors from Africa and beyond, this collection highlights the challenges that international justice has faced in addressing atrocities in Africa.

FIAN’s Annual Report highlights both the far reaching and localized advances in the field of economic, social and cultural rights that FIAN, and its Sections and Co-ordinations, have helped make possible. This year’s report gives an overview of the main activities for each of FIAN’s target areas in 2009: access to land and natural resources, the right to water, extraterritorial States’ obligations, justiciability of the right to food, monitoring States’ right to food policies, and the gender perspective related to the right to food. Also included is a summation of FIAN’s highly successful European campaign for the right to food, and the high points of each of FIAN’s worldwide Sections and Co-ordinations.

The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) has launched its new website. It can be accessed at . The new website, which replaces four separate sites, is easy-to-navigate and provides access to all HSRP publications, research and data, as well as the eNewletter archive. The new site delivers improved usability, additional features, and significantly more content than the previous sites.

Asian workers who stitch nearly all the world's soccer balls have seen little improvement in lives dominated by poverty, a report said days before the start of the World Cup tonight. Thirteen years ago companies such as adidas and Nike joined labour and development organisations to end the use of an estimated 7000 children to stitch soccer balls. However, ''child labour continues to exist'' in the three main ball-making countries - Pakistan, China and India - the report by the International Labour Rights Forum said.

China and India are emerging economic powers rather than the architects of a new world order, writes Shawn Hattingh; there is no overhaul of the existing capitalist order and class-based social divisions imminent. The global power balance is simply widening to include the new elite of China and India in partnership with their American and European counterparts, says Hattingh, but it is still the workers who are being exploited by the same heads of industry.

Following a violent attack on Emmanuel Lubala Mugisho, President of leading Congolese human rights organisation Heritiers de la Justice, Christian Aid is appealing to the international community for increased protection for human rights activists and greater support to the Congolese authorities to bring perpetrators to justice and end the cycle of violence.

ARTICLE 19 and the Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) submitted a joint oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council's 14th session welcoming the annual report of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Mr Frank La Rue. In the statement to the Human Rights Council on 4 June, ARTICLE 19 and CIHRS expressed their strong support for the Special Rapporteur's opinion that laws on "defamation of religions" are incompatible with international human rights law on freedom of expression.

The ICHRP is pleased to announce the publication of its new report Irregular Migration, Migrant Smuggling and Human Rights: Towards Coherence. Migration policies across the world are driven by three core concerns: border and law enforcement, economic interest, and protection. The report argues that official policies are failing partly because protection has been marginalised. Intensified efforts to suppress migration have not deterred people from seeking security or opportunity abroad but drive many into clandestinity, while the promotion of open economic markets has attracted millions of people to centres of prosperity but tolerated widespread exploitation. As a political consequence, discussion of migration is widely polarised and distorted by xenophobia and racism.

The Chinese government will fund the construction of a new science university in Malawi as part of the country’s ambitious initiative to open five new institutions of higher learning in the next decade, according to President Bingu wa Mutharika. China is funding major development projects in Africa, in a diplomatic initiative aimed at building good relations on the continent and averting criticism that it is only after Africa’s rich natural resources.

Outrun by large Chinese state corporations, now India is making ground in its fastest growing sector - telecommunications. The $10.7bn acquisition by Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile network, of the African assets of Kuwait’s Zain is a long awaited foray across the Indian Ocean.

MTN Group Ltd. ended talks with Weather Investments S.p.A to acquire $10 billion of assets of Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, abandoning a potential deal for the fourth time in two years. The discussions “have been terminated,” Johannesburg- based MTN said in a statement, without giving a reason. The talks failed after Algeria’s government blocked a possible sale to MTN of Orascom’s largest and most profitable unit, Djezzy.

South Africa sees growing opportunities for trade with other developing countries as new economic powerhouses emerge and Europe is engulfed by economic and currency weakness, its trade chief said on Wednesday. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said the changing world economy meant South Africa could intensify trade ties with countries such as Brazil, India and China at the expense of links with traditional partners such as the European Union.

There is intense lobbying for the finalisation of a formal trade agreement on agricultural products between Namibia and China. The general mood in government corridors is explicitly clear that as of next year trade flows from Namibia to China should add tangible value to the local economy, instead of comprising minerals exports, as is the present case.

Civil society activists are protesting the closure of a factory that produces the only UN World Health Organization-pre-qualified version of a life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drug for infants. Pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), which owns the French factory that produces didanosine, a second-line ARV for babies weighing less than 10kg, will shut down the plant in June 2010, stopping production of the drug until at least February 2011, when regulatory approval of a new United States-based manufacturing site is expected.

The estimates are at best approximate on both sides on the equation, but six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the cumulative oil spill has now reached a bit more than 3 times that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez. It is still dwarfed, however, by the estimated equivalent of 30 Exxon Valdez spills discharged into Ecuador's Amazon by Chevron/Texaco over 3 decades, or more than 50 Exxon Valdez spills into the Niger Delta by Shell, Chevron, and other companies over 5 decades.

Aid to poor countries should be tailored more towards benefiting European firms, a top-level Brussels official has recommended. Andris Piebalgs, the European Union's commissioner for development, is seeking a new aid strategy that has "value for money" as an overriding priority.

Members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have taken different platforms in negotiating with the European Union (EU) for the implementation of the full Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). This follows a recent engagement meeting between SADC’s Ministers of Trade and Industry and Economic Development and the EU in Brussels aimed at mapping the way forward for the implementation of the EPAs.