Some 432 people, among them scores of children, arrested as vagrants by police on Friday in Kinshasa, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo, are still being held under harsh conditions, their parents said.

A new police facility opened on Tuesday in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kinshasa, to bring the country's disparate police units under central command and control.

A journalist from ?La Reference Plus' and his wife were killed in front of their house in a failed robbery attempt.

A government team from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) arrived on Saturday in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, to begin the identification and registration of former Congolese soldiers who served under president Mobutu Sese Seko and now want to return home.

Expressing serious concern about the continuing hostilities by militias and foreign armed groups in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the threat to elections in the country, the Security Council today extended the United Nations Organization Mission (MONUC) there until next September, with an additional 300 troops.

The suspects in the murder of Father René de Haes, 72, the Jesuit missionary killed May 7 in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, have once again appeared before the military court of Lemba-Matete in Kinshasa.

A programme for the delivery of weapons to the secret services in the Democratic Republic of Congo - under a United Nations arms embargo - from the Belgian government of Vallon, and of second-hand guns from Brussels authorities to the police in DR-Congo, was submitted to questioning of the European Commission to establish the legitimacy of the operation.

Nigeria has suspended 11 policemen, including a senior officer, suspected of sexual abuse while serving as UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

President Olusegun Obasanjo's government ordered the return of 120 Nigerian police officers serving in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo after some of them were accused of sexual abuses, police officials said on Monday.

The UN Security Council on Monday authorised the temporary deployment of additional personnel and equipment to the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the country's general elections due in 2006.