Hundreds were again killed over the weekend in ethnic violence around the city of Jos, in central Nigeria's Plateau State, with corpses dumped into hastily dug mass graves. Christian members of Plateau's leading ethnic group, the Beromas, were apparently by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, who swept into their villages, putting homes to the torch and attacking the residents with rifles and machetes as they fled. In a telephone interview with Britain's Channel 4 News , the Rev. Benjamin Kwashi, Anglican archbishop of Jos, said the attackers were "people who knew what to do and were trained on how to do it."

Togo's main opposition leader March 7 rejected the results of a presidential poll handing a second term to incumbent Faure Gnassingbe, as hundreds of activists rallied in the capital Lome to demand justice and police responded with tear gas. Gnassingbe was returned to office in the March 4 election, defeating his main rival Jean-Pierre Fabre who took 33%, according to official results. "I have never wanted to use violence, but if I am stolen from, I will not give up the fight," warned Fabre. "We are going to stage protests, we are not going to take this lying down." (AFP, March 6; AFP, March 7)

Despite good intentions, the push to privatize government functions and instate "free trade" policies has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a sparked a hunger crisis for millions of people in African nations, researchers conclude in a new study. Market reforms that began in the mid-1980s and were supposed to aid economic growth have actually backfired in some of the world's poorest nations, leading in recent years to multiple food riots, scientists reported Feb. 15 today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A Jan. 21 account from the pan-Latin American Matriz del Sur agency claiming that Somalia's pirates are seeking to send booty as aid to Haiti's earthquake victims has made an Internet splash, picked up by Venezuela's Aporrea and translated into English on Metamute. The report only uses the word "pirates" in quotes (prefaced with "so-called" on first reference), but the pirate leader who is quoted is not identified by name or organization. No alternative term for the pirates is offered.

The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Feb. 3 reversed a Pre-Trial Chamber decision that denied the application for an arrest warrant on genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The reversal was procedural, and did not address the question of whether al-Bashir is responsible for genocide.

The Nigeria-based Socio-Economic Rights & Accountability Project (SERAP) has submitted a letter to International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requesting an inquiry into the spate of religious violence that erupted in the city of Jos in January. SERAP lawyers argue that the ICC should investigate alleged unlawful killings and other human rights abuses that took place in violation of the ICC's Rome Statute.

A new bomb explosion killed one and injured five in Somalia's self-declared independent republic of Somaliland Jan. 28. Among those injured in the blast was the governor of Sool region, Askar Farah Hussein, who was admitted to a hospital in the town of Las-anod. Commenting on the bombings that have hit the region since last October, Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin told reporters: "I have heard the opposition accusing the government of being behind the bombs; this is unfortunate, the government is investigating, but we need to know that the enemy wants [to stage] more attacks against Somaliland..."

Votani Majola, lawyer for King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo of South Africa's AbaThembu Tribe, announced Jan. 24 that the tribal homeland—covering a vast area of the republic's territory—has seceded from the nation. "AbaThembu Tribe have seceded from South Africa," he told the press. "The sooner the nation aligns with this reality and start preparing to form the State of Thembuland the better."