Nearly 10,000 more Sudanese refugees have fled to eastern Chad to escape an escalation of conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, bringing total numbers to more than 75,000. Meanwhile, safety concerns have led the UN refugee agency to start developing a site further inland in Chad to relocate the refugees who have been living in sites along the volatile border.

Chad has begun to export oil to the United States, but this desperately poor African country remains incapable of producing electricity to meet its own power needs. Just two percent of the landlocked country's eight million people have access to the electricity produced irregularly by an ancient rundown power station in the capital, N'Djamena.

The UN refugee agency is stepping up efforts to identify suitable locations to transfer more than 65,000 Sudanese refugees living along the Chad-Sudan border amid growing concerns that a ceasefire period on the Sudanese side is ending.

Chad, one of the world's poorest countries, joined the ranks of oil producers this week with the inauguration of a $3.7bn (?3.2bn, £2.2bn) project tied to a pioneering scheme for tracking how oil money is spent.

Souleymane Guengueng, a torture victim and award-winning human rights activist from Chad, has been fired from his position with the World Bank-backed Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), Human Rights Watch says. The Commission apparently took the measure in reprisal for his campaign to bring to justice the former dictator of Chad, Hissene Habre.