Zimbabwe: Revised Budget Dashes Infrastructure Repair Hopes - FINANCE minister Tendai Biti on Wednesday reduced budget figures by almost half meaning the government will take longer to rehabilitate decaying infrastructure, restore services in hospitals and rebuild schools. [AA Urbanisation]

Uganda: Border Posts to Be Reconstructed - A proposed $26.3m project to reconstruct the main border terminals has reached advanced stages. The parliamentary committee on the national economy and civil works and the lands ministry experts on Tuesday completed a final site inspection tour of the Malaba post. [AA Urbanisation]

Rebuilding the Islamic University of Gaza

Since Israel's bombing of the buildings housing scientific laboratories at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) on 28 December, the rubble that remains debunks Israeli claims that those labs were used to manufacture weapons. Of course such allegations are preposterous; indeed it would be quite foolish for IUG to even entertain the notion of producing weapons given the way in which Palestinian universities have been under constant Israeli attack since the founding of Birzeit University in the West Bank in 1975. Akram Habeeb and Marcy Newman comment for The Electronic Intifada. [Palestine]

Rwanda: Earthquake-Hit Schools to Be Rebuilt - A year after an earthquake hit Rwanda's Western Province, destroying infrastructure and claiming dozens of lives, a reconstruction drive is due to start this month, a government official said. [AA Construction]

Gaza - Thousands of Gazans remain homeless and hospitals still have a large number of intensive care patients over a week after a ceasefire ended Israel's devastating three-week offensive against Hamas militants.

This after the United Nations continued calls for immediate unhindered humanitarian access to the Strip's 1.5 million inhabitants.

"At this stage, the initial response is focusing on the re-establishment of basic services to the population of Gaza, including water, health, food, cash assistance, education and psychosocial support," the UN Office the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Monday.

This includes safety of movement by marking and clearing unexploded ordnance, removing rubble, repairing priority infrastructure, and securing access to services.

Although fewer than 500 displaced people remain in three UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) emergency shelters, most displaced Gazans are staying with host families who are overstretched and face shortages of food, non-food items such as mattresses and blankets, and water and electricity.