MPs have said they are being restricted from accessing details of the Oil Sharing Agreements (PSAs) as the Parliamentary Natural Resources Committee proposed stringent clauses that will, among others, see government officials who negotiate bad oil contracts face jail. Kitgum Woman MP Beatrice Anywar said they are subjected to tough guidelines. 'To look at a copy of the PSAs you must first write to the speaker notifying her about the date, hour and which pages you want to look at to enable them assign you a library staff to supervise you when you are reading that particular page,' Ms Anywar said.

The oil industry in Uganda will be the most capital intensive that the country has ever seen. Many ordinary people believe that it may also result in mass job creation, alleviating unemployment and under-employment - said by some reports to run as high as 80 per cent among rural youth - that not only blights lives but could also foment social and political unrest. But the reality is that the oil industry is notorious for consuming large sums of money in its operations, while employing relatively few people, most of whom have particular expertise.

Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura is forming a new press unit of police to act as an ombudsman for complaints by journalists and as a public relations department. 'The inspector general is committed to professionalizing the police force,' Simon Kuteesa, who will run the new unit, said. 'We are not re-inventing the wheel here - it's all part of a strategic initiative.' The new unit is expected to be operational in three months, he said.

Gay rights activists in Uganda have launched a new documentary tracing gay love in pre-colonial Ugandan society. Kabaka Mwanga II, widely believed to have been gay, ruled Buganda from 1884 to 1897. The documentary, 'Gay Love in Pre-colonial Africa: The Untold Story of Ugandan Martyrs' was premiered in Kampala last week ahead of the 3 June public holiday to commemorate the burning to death of Ugandan martyrs.

The continued arrival of refugees fleeing post-election violence and militia activities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in western Uganda, and the government’s efforts to resettle them, have created a land row that has already cost the life of a government official. Alphonse Nteziryayo, commander of Rwamwanja settlement, in Kamwenge district, had accompanied humanitarian aid workers to assess the land the government had set aside for the settlement of Congolese refugees in Uganda when he was attacked and killed by squatters, who had settled there.

Long before the ICC, or even Invisible Children, made Kony an Internet sensation, local activists were shouting themselves hoarse trying to get the world to understand the broader context of the conflict in the north – President Museveni’s stranglehold on the country for almost three decades.

Born Again in the United States of Uganda is the story of how well financed U.S. evangelicals, fundamentalists and neoconservatives conspired in the incitement of hatred against gays and how this led to the introduction of the ‘Kill the Gays’ bill to Uganda’s parliament.

As midwestern Uganda gears up for oil production that will entail billions of dollars in investments, a range of central government officials interviewed by Oil in Uganda admit that there is no overall development plan for the region, and no mechanism for coordinating the efforts of different departments. 'Government has not designed any development plan for the oil region. We did not even have a development plan for the oil refinery in Hoima District until recently when the Ministry of Energy came up with one,' admits Johnson Mugume, a senior advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. The refinery plan itself, he adds, is still in its infancy and will take years of work to finalise.

The withdrawal of Dominion Uganda Ltd from exploration around Lake Edward - an area which, according to independent petroleum geologists, may hold between 90 million and 1.1 billion barrels of oil - leaves a plethora of unanswered questions swirling around an industry that, in Uganda, remains no more transparent than a dollop of waxy crude. Why did Dominion pull out? What happened to a ‘Letter of Intent’ its parent company, UK-based Ophir Energy, signed in March 2012 with Canadian wildcatter, Octant Energy Corp., giving Octant an 80 per cent share in, and operatorship of, Exploration Area 4B? Did the government of Uganda approve these deals? And where does this leave the mysterious Alpha Oil - a Ugandan owned company that, in one of the sector’s best kept secrets, for many years held a five per cent stake in Exploration Area 4B?

Change is about to sweep Ugandan politics after decades of Museveni rule...

When you stand on the island of Rukwanzi at the heart of Lake Albert, your first thought, echoing perhaps the casual rhetoric of the region’s oil men, is that you are at the edge of a new frontier. But for its communities the lake is a centre, a point of connection and integration, the great body of water into which the White Nile flows, part of the vast rift valley that draws Africa’s citizens into mutual dependency. What happens here matters to half a dozen neighbouring countries. But the lines being drawn now, as neat and straight as the borders on colonial maps, mark not sovereign territory, but exploration blocks for oil and gas companies. Just a few miles from Rukwanzi six Congolese were killed in September 2007, shot at by the Ugandan army while they travelled in a passenger ferry from the island to the DRC shore. It was revealed last week that Heritage Oil and Gas, the British wildcat explorer founded by former mercenary Tony Buckingham, played a key role in triggering that military operation after its staff had crossed illegally into Congolese waters.

Contrary to widespread expectations and public pronouncements, the Ugandan government has pulled the plug on controversial legislation which since 2000 has granted blanket amnesty to more than 26,000 members of armed groups, most notably the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The Act was passed as part of efforts to end hostilities in northern Uganda and bring the LRA to the negotiating table. Over the following six years, several detailed accords were drawn up but LRA leader Joseph Kony repeatedly refused to sign a comprehensive peace agreement. 'There will be no blanket amnesty for anyone now,' said Internal Affairs Minister Hilary Onek, who on 25 May used his prerogative to allow significant sections of the Amnesty Act to lapse.

The prevalence of drug-resistant HIV strains in Uganda has risen from 8.6 per cent to 12 per cent in the last five years, one of the highest rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a recent study. The PharmAccess African Studies to Evaluate Resistance (PASER) monitoring cohort study report for 2008-2012 found that the prevalence of transmitted drug resistance among people who have never taken life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) medication was substantially higher in Uganda.

The makers of this documentary are raising funds online: Born Again in the United States of Uganda is the story of how well financed US evangelicals, fundamentalists and neo conservatives conspired in the incitement of hatred against gays and how this led to the introduction of the ‘Kill the Gays’ bill to Uganda’s parliament. The documentary will explore how the US evangelical right invests heavily in financial and advocacy effort in influencing religious Africans to shun gay rights .

The Judiciary has apologised to health activists and advocates for the delay to pronounce itself on a case in which government was sued over high preventable maternal deaths, citing administrative issues, among others. The apology followed a peaceful demonstration by health activists. The activists marched from Kamwokya, a Kampala suburb to the Constitutional Court under police guidance, to express their concern over the seven-month delay.

About 100 people have died of cholera, although the Ministry of Health put the death toll at 73, while thousands are being hospitalised in different health centres. The number of people affected has increased to 3,111 from 2,200 in March in 13 districts of northern, eastern and western Uganda.

A farmer who says that Heritage Oil dumped dozens of truckloads of waste in a pit dug on his land, a few kilometres north of Murchison Falls National Park, is still waiting for the National Environmental Monitoring Agency (NEMA) to give him the results of tests they conducted in 2009, and for the waste to be removed for permanent disposal elsewhere. Douglas Oluoch, 43, relates that he first came into contact with Heritage in his capacity as a local councillor (LC II) in Purongo sub-county of what is now Nwoya District. In 2008, he says, a Heritage official, who he can identify only as 'Albert', offered to pay him for accepting waste from exploration wells dug within the National Park.

A recent brush between Leader of Opposition Nandala Mafabi and Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Members of Parliament reflects a deeper problem in the FDC, Uganda’s leading opposition party, reports The Independent. 'The Independent has learnt that as FDC President Kizza Besigye pays more attention to protests, a power vacuum has developed within the party that many players are now trying to fill, including perhaps, the ruling party. Within FDC, jostling for the top job has taken centre stage and issues like fundraising been neglected, leaving the party broke, unable to finance crucial elections, and its leadership splintered.'

On 17 May 2012, Trans Support Initiative Uganda (TSI-U), a Transgender and Intersex Organization in Uganda joined the rest of the world to commemorate the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia. 'We take this day to remember all the injustice, violence, discrimination and murders that have already occurred to colleagues, relatives and friends. It has not been long since we lost our very own David Kato because of homophobia, Aunt Victoria from Tanzania because of transphobia, the denial to access of medical services more especially HIV/Aids drugs to people like Beyonce and the closure of human rights workshops denying already marginalized people access to information.'

Transgender and intersex people in Uganda face physical and verbal abuse, are denied access to health services, are victims of blackmail and extortion as well as unlawful arrests and mob justice.