Registration offices for candidates in the Democratic Republic of Congo's presidential and legislative elections opened on Friday in the capital, Kinshasa.

The heads of three United Nations agencies, who are on a joint mission to Africa's Great Lakes region, have identified the alleviation of human suffering, security and protection of vulnerable people as some of the issues vital to stability and peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Two explosions from heavy weapons echoed from the eastern shore of Lake Upemba across the glassy waters to a tiny island formed from dead reeds. Displaced families were huddled there, under a makeshift shelter that was slowly sinking into the sludge.

At least 37,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are without humanitarian relief because of continued attacks by military insurgents in North Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), officials said.

The retraining of 20 Congolese civilian and military prison personnel began on Wednesday in the southwestern French town of Agen, as part of the Democratic Republic of Congo's effort to shore up its maintenance of the rule of law, the press attaché at French embassy in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, said.

Voters continued trickling into polling stations throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday for the second day of voting on the country's new draft constitution.

The search for possible victims of an earthquake near the lakeside town of Kalemie in eastern Congo (DRC) continued along the shores of Lake Tanganyika on Tuesday, humanitarian and provincial authorities in Goma, capital of North Kivu Province, said.

The Police Department of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) presented at a news conference in the capital, Kinshasa, on Monday three of its officers who are suspected of killing a journalist and his wife in November.

Some 1,000 people who had fled their homes to live in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa, for six to nine years have returned to their villages in the provinces of Equateur in the northwest of the country and Orientale in the northeast, humanitarian aid workers said on Thursday.

Only five kilometres separate the ports of Brazzaville and Kinshasa but a two-week suspension of river traffic between the two cities made the distance seem infinite. To the relief of Brazzaville's 856,410 residents, authorities reopened the trade route across the River Congo on 4 November.