Kampala - Anti-gay Christian bishops from around the world are meeting in Uganda as a follow-up to their last conference in Jerusalem, in which they formed a movement that threatens to split the 70-million-strong Anglican Church. 

About 40 bishops from Africa, Australia, the United States, India, Canada and Britain are taking part in the conference, which began Monday near the Ugandan capital Kampala. 

The conservative anti-gay clergy formed the Global Anglican Future Conference Movement (GAFCON) this year after the mainstream Anglican church refused to condemn the 2003 consecration of an American gay cleric. 

Nairobi - Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has denied reports it recently launched attacks and abducted children in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

"The recent media reports of LRA attacks are fabricated and dangerous imaginations formulated by those bent on stifling the current peace process between Uganda and LRA," rebel spokesman David Nyekorach-Matsanga said in a statement.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday demanded the immediate release of 90 schoolchildren it said the LRA had abducted in DR Congo the previous week.

The LRA is notorious for kidnapping children and forcing them to fight or become sex slaves.

Nairobi/Kinshasa  - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has demanded the immediate release of 90 schoolchildren it says were abducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo by a notorious Ugandan rebel group.

The agency said local authorities informed them that the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) took 50 children from the village of Kiliwa and 40 from a secondary school in Duru in the northeast of the sprawling nation, which borders Uganda.

"UNICEF demands the unconditional release of the abducted children," Julien Harneis, UNICEF's Chief of Field Operations in eastern DR Congom said.

London - A highly-sensitive row over alleged racial discrimination in Britain's top police force escalated Tuesday with the suspension of Tarique Ghaffur, Scotland Yard's most senior Muslim officer.

Ghaffur, a Ugandan Asian who joined the force at 16 and is an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (Met), has accused the force of racial discrimination and is taking his case to an industrial tribunal.

Scotland Yard chief Ian Blair, the chief target of Ghaffur's allegations, said Tuesday that the officer's "temporary suspension" had "nothing to do" with the employment tribunal case.

Kampala - One of Uganda's main tribal kings Henry Wako Muloki was buried Monday during a state funeral attended by President Yoweri Museveni.

Muloki, who at 87 was the country's oldest monarch, died of cancer on September 1st. Monday was declared a public holiday in his honour.

The late king ruled over the Busoga tribe, which with over 3 million people is one of the largest in the country.

The East African nation has several kings presiding over their respective tribes after the era of kingdom rule, which was abolished in the 1960s, was revived by Museveni
15 years ago.

Kampala- Governmental support for conservation programs and improved security in Africa's Great Lakes Region have led to an increase in the number of mountain gorillas by five per-cent in the past seven years, ecologists said on Saturday.

There are now 780 endangered gorillas dwelling in the thick bamboo forests blanketing a mountainous enclave shared among the three states of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).