A Congolese family uprooted by war went to court on Friday seeking to be reunited with a Kenyan baby they say they found abandoned on the roadside in a case testing the right of refugees to adopt. The case could be a first in global legal history, the family's lawyer and the U.N. refugee agency say. "I believe it would set a precedent. The law is silent on whether refugees can adopt," lawyer Rose Mbanya told Reuters as the case began at Nairobi's High Court.

A U.N. court trying the masterminds of Rwanda's 1994 genocide jailed a former military chaplain for 25 years on Friday for sexual assault and killing ethnic Tutsis who sought sanctuary at a seminary. Emmanuel Rukundo is one of two clergymen the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) indicted for their role in the 100-day slaughter in which troops and Hutu militia butchered 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

The World Bank will give a $100 million emergency grant to help cash-strapped Democratic Republic of Congo pay essential bills and teachers' salaries, the Bank said on Friday. The World Bank proposed the emergency funds earlier this month after the country's mining sector was hit by the financial crisis and foreign reserves dwindled to just $36 million, down from more than $225 million last April.

Some 53 million West African children will be vaccinated against polio in schools, health clinics and their homes over the next month to tackle risks from the paralysing virus in Nigeria. The $67 million campaign, spanning eight countries, aims to increase immunity levels in one of the last strongholds of the disease that the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF have spent more than 20 years and $6 billion trying to eradicate.