Malawi's army has been sent to round up a herd of rampaging elephants that have killed at least three people since they broke out of a game reserve earlier this week, police said last Thursday.

Levels of corruption and poor accountability in the country may deteriorate further between now and the general elections next year, the British Department of International Development (DFID) said on Monday. Launching the Country Assistance Plan (CAP) for Malawi in which DFID will provide K22 billion to Malawi for the next three years, head of DFID Malawi Mike Wood said: "There is a risk that government may divert development resources for purely political purposes," reads the CAP document released on Monday.

The lack of rain has affected the agricultural productivity of the entire southern Africa region. In Malawi the food crisis has been particularly devastating as drought conditions alternated by floods and the selling off of government grain reserves have left Malawian farmers in dire straits.

The Malawi Fisheries Department has embarked on a 10 year strategic plan to restore the chambo fishery in Malawi's waters. The strategy will strive to restore depleted fish stocks to maximum sustainable yields. The goal of this initiative is to meet the country's international obligations to restore the chambo fishery to its 1980 status by 2010, says the fisheries department.

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) has ordered community radio stations to stop airing news bulletins, saying the Communications Act forbade such stations from running news programmes. Macra Director General Evans Namanja spoke at a two-day international workshop on the promotion of community radio stations. "News is supposed to be for the general public and not a particular community. By broadcasting news, the community radio stations are hijacking the role of public broadcasters, such as the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and Television Malawi (TVM)," said Namanja.

Authorities in Malawi have opted to take advantage of the respect religious leaders command in society, to partner with faith-based organisations in anti-corruption campaigns.

Leading women rights activists in Malawi have cautioned President Bakili Muluzi against using abusive language towards women at political rallies, a practice they claim frustrates efforts to uplift their social status.

There has been a shortage of consultation time in Malawi's PRSP process, the government has dominated the process and been reluctant to share information, participation has been selective and structural and institutional linkages have been inadequate. This is according to a Christian Aid study examining claims from donors that the PRSP policy and planning processes have been opened up to extensive participation by ordinary people and civil society groups.

As one way of reducing poverty in the country, the Mzuzu Environmental Education Centre has embarked on a campaign to educate the community around Mzuzu on bee and guinea fowl farming. Parks and wildlife Officer, Obedi Mkandawire, told The Malawi Standard that the Centre has decided to assist government to fight poverty in the country by teaching, identifying funds for farmers and encouraging the community to practice bee and guinea fowl farming because honey and guinea fowl eggs are on high demand.

Although Malawi is making some progress towards improving its human rights, the areas of education, health, freedom of expression and women's rights remain problematic, says a new report by the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC).

Recently, a draft report prepared by the University of Malawi together with UNICEF-Malawi on the project: ‘What Every Adolescent has a Right to Know’ has been commended by many who have read it. The project aims at finding out the information gaps of adolescents on HIV/Aids prevention, which will assist in the development of an information package for the youth and put in place programmes of interventions in the fight against HIV/Aids for them.

Gender Co-ordination Network vice-chairperson Emma Kaliya says it is disappointing to note that while Malawi has preached about the 30 percent inclusion of women in government by 2005, the percentage of female Ministers had dropped from 24 percent to 17 percent due to a recent cabinet reshuffle.

The Vice Chairperson for Non Governmental Organisation Gender Co-ordination Network Emma Kaliya says it is disappointing to note that while Malawi as a nation has preached about the 30 percent inclusion of women by 2005, during the recent cabinet reshuffle, the opposite has happened. Kaliya said the percentage of female Ministers has dropped from 24 percent to 17 percent due to the new appointments, which have only targeted men while most appointed female ministers have been deputised.

Splits in Malawi's United Democratic Front (UDF) began to emerge this week as another senior official announced his resignation from the ruling party. Last Thursday, Jan Sonke, a UDF lawmaker for the commercial capital Blantyre, cited the party's failure to "reduce poverty, strengthen democracy and improve the economy" as reasons for his resignation.

Just a year before he leaves office, Malawi President Bakili Muluzi has broken all records and appointed the tiny southern African country's largest cabinet in 39 years of independence. Using absolute constitutional powers to appoint a 46-strong cabinet, Muluzi last week more than doubled his predecessor's average size government.

The Malawi National HIV/Aids Strategic Framework 2000-2004 calls for an expanded, multi-sectoral national response to the epidemic. However, this article states that the capacity to respond to these calls lags behind. In many sectors, policy making still proceeds as if HIV/Aids never happened. Despite growing efforts, organisations involved in agricultural research and development generally have limited understanding of how AIDS affects agricultural systems.

Malawian women’s high fertility rate averaging 6.3 children per woman is among the factors contributing to population increases despite government’s interventions to balance population growth and available resources, officials have said.

While Malawi's health sector is already hurt by shortages of drugs due to a constrained government budget, and a rising death toll because of HIV/AIDS, an exodus of medical personnel to richer western nations is threatening to cripple the already ailing sector.

Malawi's President Bakili Muluzi is to step down next year, abandoning attempts to change the constitution to allow him to run for a third five-year term. In an address to the nation Muluzi said he had endorsed a cabinet proposal for the economic planning minister, Bingu Wa Mutharika, to run as the ruling United Democratic Front candidate.

The Malawian Government has been defending its decision to sell off 20% of its grain reserves. Chief Technical Advisor at Malawi's Ministry of Agriculture, Dr Allard Malindi, said Malawi is being responsible in seeking to sell off the grain because they were expecting a good harvest in three months' time.