By December this year, aid agencies estimate that the number of displaced and hungry people in need of life-saving aid in Somalia will swell to 3.5 million-nearly half the country's population. Yet, as drought and conflict conspire to worsen the crisis, the humanitarian space to deliver food and other essential assistance in this conflict zone has all but vanished.

Should the Federal Government of Nigeria bring in British soldiers for the purpose of containing the violence in the Niger Delta, Nigeria will be seized by an uncontrollable violence.

Nearly 180,000 children in Somalia are acutely malnourished, with 25,000 severely malnourished, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) which has scaled up its nutrition operation to reach more than 50,000 children under the age of five.

The United Nations Security Council is no stranger to intractable international disputes. But soon Sudan will present it with a different kind of problem, one it has not faced in its 62-year history.

The government carried out an exercise to destroy 160 tonnes of ammunition and unexploded ordinances at Gabiro Military Training School yesterday.

The Federal Government has described the indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as ill-timed and an action that could aggravate the already bad situation in the country.

President Isaias Afwerki today received and held talks with a Sudanese government delegation headed by the Minister of Justice, Mr. Abdulbast Sebderat. The delegation also includes Mr. Al-Semani Al-Wesila, Deputy Foreign Minister.

Angolan Government and main opposition Unita party, Thursday in Luanda, reiterated the need for continued combined efforts towards the pacification of the country, by settling, through dialogue, situations that can disturb the process of national reconciliation.

In the modern world of today, the Truth and Reconciliatory agenda has become the established path to achieving national healing, peace and reconciliation.

Delta State Governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan has said majority of the people of Niger Delta believe in continuous dialogue despite the cancellation of Niger Delta summit by the Federal Government.

The U.N said Friday that Rwandan General Karenzi Karake whose tenure as deputy force commander in Darfur is under fire - should stay still on his job because it was satisfied with his professional service, RNA reports.

Ray Apire fought for the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for 10 years, rising to the position of major and commander, until he surrendered in 2004. Now struggling to live with the people he once terrorised, 50-year-old Apire spoke to IRIN in the northern town of Gulu:

Joshua Ebei is a chairman in one of the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Lodwar town in the northwestern district of Turkana Central.

The Federal Government has said that it has the capacity to effectively tackle and deal with the militant groups that have taken and held hostage the Niger Delta area.

THE House of Representatives is to raise an ad hoc committee on the raging crisis in the Niger Delta.

The Federal Government has appealed to the people of the Niger Delta region to give them chance to address all the injustices they have been suffering for years.

We share the concern of patriotic Nigerians about President Yar'adua's reported acceptance of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's offer to deploy British military personnel "to train and advise Nigerian troops fighting militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta region."

A five-day conference of the inter-disciplinary Genocide Studies Centre, a network of researchers based in the United States of America, in partnership with the National Commission Against Genocide, opened Tuesday at Hotel Novotel in Kigali.

AN HIV-positive soldier whom the military is obliged to consider for foreign deployment says he is again being overlooked.

The defence ministry is to spend sh35b to construct a new hospital to replace the former Mbuya military hospital.

At least 16 people have been killed in renewed clashes in central Somalia after Ethiopian troops attacked and retook control of a key town near the Somali-Ethiopian border, Radio Garowe reported.

The call by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, for the arrest of Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, is already a subject of debate among journalists in Douala.

Worried by the lingering crisis in the Niger Delta region, the House of Representatives yesterday resolved to constitute a special ad-hoc committee to conduct public hearing on the crisis.

At least eleven fire-arms of different calibres have handed over on 15-22 July to the National Police department in the northern Bengo province by citizens owning them illegally.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,