The US envoy for Sudan, Scott Gration, is due to meet Darfur rebel leaders in neighbouring Chad in a bid to revive the stalled peace process.

Mr Gration is hoping to talk to officials from two rebel groups – the SLA and Jem – as well as Chad’s President Idriss Deby.

Chad and Sudan accuse each other of backing rebel groups which operate across their troubled border.

Some 300,000 people have died in the six-year conflict, the UN says.

The BBC’s Celeste Hicks in N’Djamena says it is an open secret that leaders from the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) are often in Chad’s capital.

Many are from the same Zaghawa ethnic group as President Deby.

Who are Sudan’s Darfur rebels

Leaders of Abdul Wahid’s faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) are also in Chad for the talks.

Diplomatic sources say that the US envoy is hoping for a sign of the rebels’ willingness to agree to a cessation of hostilities and to become more of a political force.

However just four weeks ago Jem said they took and briefly held the towns of Kornoi and Um Baru in Darfur, and Jem sources told the BBC that they may consider trying to retake Kornoi if the circumstances are right.

Although Mr Gration initially said it was not in his mandate to talk to Chadian rebels who recently staged an attack in the east of Chad, it is thought that he may now try to look at their role in the whole destabilisation of the region.

Chad accuses Sudan of backing these rebel groups.

Recent peace talks have stalled, partly because the rebels have split into so many different groups.</p

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Kenya’s police have denied claims of torture and rape when they disarmed rival clan militias last year.

Human Rights Watch says there should be an inquiry into the "collective punishment" of civilians in Mandera.

The US-based organisation said its research showed thousands of people had been tortured and women had been raped.

But police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told the BBC there had been no torture or beatings and asked HRW to produce evidence to back up its findings.

"Certainly we should look into the laws in this country which allow any street boy to come here and publish very disparaging lies about our internal security forces," he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

The region around Mandera town in the north-east is prone to conflicts between rival clans, often for control of scarce water and pastures.

The area is largely inhabited by Somali-speaking nomads.

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By Leslie Goffe
BBC Focus on Africa magazine, New York

First it was Oprah Winfrey’s wistful reach for the continent, now other prominent African Americans are finding their roots.

In 2005 Oprah Winfrey underwent DNA testing in an effort to determine the genetic make-up of her body’s cells.

The popular American talk show host wanted to know where her ancestors, taken as slaves to the United States, had come from.

Famous genes

Since then thousands of other African Americans have followed suit, many of them household names in the US.

Comedian Chris Rock discovered that he was descended from the Udeme people of northern Cameroon.

LeVar Burton, an actor who played the slave Kunta Kinte in the TV drama Roots, linked himself up genetically with the Hausa in Nigeria.

Civil rights leader Andrew Young traced his lineage to the Mende people of Sierra Leone and is also believed to be a distant relative of one of the leaders of the 1839 Amistad slave ship mutiny.

DNA testing has also resulted in some African Americans being bestowed with honorary African titles.

The Oscar-winning actor, Forest Whitaker, who portrayed the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, was made an honorary chief of Igboland in south-eastern Nigeria.

He was given the title of Nwannedinambar of Nkwerre which means "brother in a foreign land", during a visit to Nigeria in April.

Getting results

There are more than two dozen genealogy organisations in the US selling genetic ancestry tests but African Ancestry is the only black-owned firm.

It is also the first to cater specifically to African Americans. Of the half a million Americans who have purchased DNA tests, around 35,000 of them are African American.

African Ancestry charges $349 to test either a person’s maternal or paternal lineage.

Once the fee is paid, swabs used to collect a DNA sample from the inside of the cheek are sent to the customer and then back to African Ancestry’s laboratory.

"We did not talk about where we came from when I was growing up"

Lyndra Marshall

The DNA’s genetic sequence is extracted and compared to others in the firm’s database.

The company claims this contains 25,000 samples from 30 countries and 200 ethnic groups, and is the largest collection of African lineages in the world.

African Ancestry say that they are very precise in tracing where a person’s descendants originate from.

Once this is known, a "results package" is sent out, including a print-out of a person’s DNA sequence, a certificate of ancestry and a map of Africa.

"It’s a kind of welcome to Africa package," said Ghanaian-born Ofori Anor, editor of the African expatriate magazine, Asante.

Transformation

Gina Paige, a founder of African Ancestry, wants to transform the way people view themselves and the way they view Africa.

When many African Americans visited Africa in the past, they were interested mostly in kente cloths and masks, nowadays they want to know more about the country they are visiting.

Although they still visit the slave castles, they are now also interested in the price of property.

Purchasing a townhouse in the Ghanaian capital Accra or a commercial property in Sierra Leone’s Freetown feels less implausible.

"What we need now is for people to get deeply involved in one particular country or region or culture," said Andrew Young, the civil rights leader whose consulting firm acts as a liaison for American companies wanting to do business in Africa.

There has been a change too in the way Africans see African Americans and claims of kinship that were once viewed with amusement are now embraced.

This is partly due to the emergence of President Barack Obama and because of the role played by African Americans in his historic election.

As a result, African politicians and businessmen want African Americans to lobby in the US on the continent’s behalf.

Traditional African rulers have also been busy handing out honorary chieftaincies to African Americans in the hope it will lead to an increase in investment and a boost in tourism.

"With Obama being both African and American, and our president, this has made many of us interested in where we came from"

Lyndra Marshall

Guinea-Bissau’s Tourism Ministry encouraged comedian Whoopi Goldberg to visit when in 2007, DNA tests showed she was descended from the Papel and Bayote people of the country.

Unfortunately, Goldberg has not taken up the offer as she has a fear of flying and has not been in an aeroplane for 20 years.

Unlike the Hollywood actress, as soon as Lyndra Marshall, a 56-year-old retiree from Maryland near Washington DC discovered her African heritage, she immediately boarded a plane for Ghana’s Ashanti region.

"We did not talk about where we came from when I was growing up," said Ms Marshall.

Since she found out she was of Ashanti descent, she has been trying to get other people to visit and invest in the country.

Along with DNA technology, Ms Marshall credits President Obama with kindling an interest in Africa.

"With Obama being both African and American, and our president, this has made many of us interested in where we came from, too."

Getting it right

Although many people are excited about the prospect of tracing their ancestry, critics say the work of America’s genealogy companies is far from accurate.

"African Americans just want to be able to say they were once kings and once ruled the world"

Ofori Anor
Editor, Asante magazine

On a visit to South Africa in 2005, Oprah Winfrey said that DNA testing had conclusively revealed where she is from. She thought she was Zulu but subsequent DNA testing showed she was a descendant of the Kpelle people of Liberia.

Professor Deborah Bolnick of the University of Texas is particularly critical of African Ancestry.

She says its database is too small to fulfil its marketing promise that it is "the only company whose tests will place your African ancestry in a present day country or region in Africa".

"Consumers should know the limitations and complexities before they spend hundreds of dollars thinking they’re going to find an answer to who they really are," said Professor Bolnick.

"It’s really much more uncertain than the testing companies make out."

Despite these limitations, African Ancestry customers like Ms Marshall are convinced her results are correct.

"I have lots of family that look very Ghanaian, they are short like them, dark like them and I have a cousin that looks just like the Ashanti king."

However, comments like this offend the Editor of Asante magazine.

"African Americans just want to be able to say they were once kings and once ruled the world," said Mr Anor.

He feels that African governments and traditional rulers should stop the practice of granting citizenship and chieftaincies to African Americans.

"Just because your genetics show you came from a place, should that mean you can lay claim to that group of people or place now"

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Hardline Islamist militiamen in Somalia have stoned to death a man accused of raping and murdering a woman.

The execution took place in front of a large crowd in the town of Wanlaweyn, about 90km (55 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu.

The man was convicted by an unofficial court set up by the al-Shabab movement.

On Thursday in Mogadishu, al-Shabab – which advocates a strict form of Sharia – publicly amputated a hand and a foot from each of four men accused of theft.

"This man was accused of raping and killing an 18-year-old girl in May this year. The court found him guilty of the charges brought against him," Sheikh Mohamed Saleban, a local al-Shabab official, told AFP news agency on Sunday.

"Ten masked men dug a hole, buried him to his neck before throwing stones at him"

Abdullahi Husein
Local resident

Somali justice – Islamist-style

Somali rage at grave desecration

"He was a married man, which is why the court sentenced him to be stoned to death," he added, explaining that a rape conviction only incurs flogging.

Local resident Abdullahi Husein said most of the town’s population turned out to watch the lynching, where gunmen banned cameras and mobile phones.

"Ten masked men from the al-Shabab forces stoned him to death in front of everyone. They had dug a hole, buried him to his neck before throwing stones at him," he told AFP.

In October last year, al-Shabab ordered a 13-year-old girl to be stoned to death in public in the southern city of Kismayo.

She was accused of adultery after reporting she had been raped by three men.

The radical Islamists, who are accused of links to al-Qaeda, already control much of the south of the country.

Since last month, al-Shabab’s guerrillas have been locked in ferocious battles with forces loyal to the fragile UN-backed government in Mogadishu.

Last week, the administration appealed to neighbouring countries urgently to send troops to help.

A moderate Islamist president took office in January but even his introduction of Sharia law to the strongly Muslim country has not appeased the guerrillas.

Somalia has been without an effective government since 1991.</p

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Presidential polls are set to take place in Guinea-Bissau, four months after soldiers killed leader Joao Bernardo Vieira.

Eleven candidates are contesting the election in the impoverished West African nation.

Front-runners are Malam Bacai Sanha of the ruling party, and former presidents Henrique Rosa and Kumba Yala.

President Vieira was killed in March in apparent revenge for the death of the head of the army in a bomb blast.

He had ruled Guinea Bissau for a total of 23 years, from 1980-1999 and from 2005-2009.

Drug trade

About 600,000 of the country’s 1.3 million residents are eligible to vote in the polls. A second round of polling could be held if there is no outright winner.

Malam Bacai Sanha, who served as interim president from 1999-2000, is the ruling party candidate.

He faces his biggest challenges from opposition leader and former President Kumba Yala, who was overthrown in a 2003 coup, and from Henrique Rosa, who served as interim president from 2003-2005.

All three leading candidates have promised to bring peace and stability to the nation.

They have also promised to tackle the drug trade in Guinea-Bissau, which has become a transit point for gangs shipping cocaine from South America to Europe.</p

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Somali pirates have released a Belgian dredging ship, the Pompei, and its crew two months after they were captured, the Belgian prime minister has said.

"We were… informed that the entire crew is in good health," Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy said in a statement obtained by AFP news agency.

No details were given about the circumstances of the ship’s release.

The MV Pompei’s crew include a Dutch captain, two Belgians, three Filipinos and four Croats.

The first Belgian ship to be seized by Somali pirates, it was hijacked on 18 April around 150km (93 miles) north of the Seychelles.

At the time of its capture, it had been on its way to South Africa from Dubai, where it was to help build artificial islands.

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By Jonah Fisher
BBC News, Johannesburg

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai embarked on a three-week tour hoping to convince world leaders that the time had come to re-engage with Zimbabwe.

On the surface things went well.

A photo inside the White House of a friendly handshake with Barack Obama and meetings with European leaders all helped convey the message that this is a man the West feels it can work with.

Ultimately, though, this was not about goodwill but the cold hard cash that Zimbabwe’s government needs to get the country back on its feet.

And of that, Mr Tsvangirai secured very little.

Just over $200m (£121m) is a scant return when the country’s finance minister says they need $7bn.

Tellingly, very little of that money will go into the hands of government ministers.

TSVANGIRAI’S WORLD TOUR

• From 7 to 25 June 2009
• Visited US, UK, Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Norway and France
• $200m in aid secured

"To us that is neither here nor there," Prime Minister Tsvangirai said on the French leg of the trip.

"The funds that are being given are going to Zimbabweans."

But the channelling of funds through international aid agencies is a very public rejection of the government Mr Tsvangirai is supposed to be leading, and of his claims that Zimbabwe has embarked on "an irreversible transition to democracy".

Scepticism

On a basic level there is no doubt that things have improved in Zimbabwe since the signing of the power-sharing agreement in February.

The scrapping of the Zimbabwe dollar has put an end to hyperinflation and there are now goods in the shops – available of course if you have the hard currency to pay for them.

Schools and hospitals are also starting to function again, thanks to salaries being paid.

The maize harvest for this year, thanks to good rains and the liberalising of the grain market, has doubled.

But crucially, there is still little to show that on key political issues Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is being treated as an equal partner, or even heard, by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.

Differences over appointments are unresolved, activists are still being detained and media laws restrictive.

Amnesty International recently released a report saying "persistent and serious" human rights violations were still taking place.

Despite that, there are many in Harare willing to give the prime minister the benefit of the doubt.

"Any kind of re-engagement is good," a 24-year-old from the University of Zimbabwe said. "Zimbabwe has finally returned to the family of nations."

Going home

And here in Johannesburg there are signs that some Zimbabweans believe things are changing for the better and are heading back.

This month voluntary repatriations organised by the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration got underway.

Sixty people were packed onboard the bus as it left early in the morning with more than 100 left disappointed on the side of the road.

"I’m concerned about my security but the degree of concern has actually decreased because of the coalition government," a man called Hardlife told the BBC from his seat on the bus.

Others are returning out of a sense of civic duty.

"More than 10% of Zimbabweans are in exile, so I’m calling for them to go back and rebuild their country," a teacher called Tafudzwa said.

"I’m going back to school I will be teaching on Monday."

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The president of Niger says he will assume sweeping emergency powers, after a court again said he could not extend his rule.

Mamadou Tandja, 71, made his announcement after Niger’s top court ruled against a referendum that could give him three more years in office.

Mr Tandja has governed the West African nation since 1999, serving two terms.

His plans to remain in power have sparked domestic protests and been criticised by international donors.

But supporters of Mr Tandja say he has brought economic growth and so deserves the right to seek re-election.

In a televised address, the president said he was assuming the special powers "because the independence of the country is threatened".

His address came hours after the Constitutional Court rejected his request for a review of an earlier decision that ruled his referendum unlawful.

Mr Tandja announced his referendum plan in May. But it drew protests from the opposition and trade unions, who turned to the court.

The president then dissolved parliament and assumed executive powers.

The country’s electoral commission, meanwhile, has set parliamentary elections for 20 August – two weeks after the referendum’s proposed date.

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