South Africa – home to the one-sixth of the world’s population living with HIV – today unveiled an ambitious campaign to prevent and treat the virus, a move hailed by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The drive seeks to test 15 million people for HIV by next year, a six-fold jump in just two years, as well as reach 1.5 million people with antiretroviral treatment by June 2011, up from 1 million last year. Nearly 6 million people – or 18 per cent of all adults – in South Africa live with HIV, the largest population of people in the world.

The pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected an appeal by prosecutors to overturn an earlier decision declining to confirm charges against a rebel leader accused of directing the September 2007 attack that killed a dozen African Union peacekeepers in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region. In February, the chamber said there was insufficient evidence to establish that Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, who commands a splinter group of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), could be held criminally responsible for the crimes he has been charged with.