A charity set up to help disadvantaged communities in rural Africa to improve their water supplies, food production, health and incomes using environmental and sustainable methods, has won the overall award for excellence at the Charity Awards 2008.

The NCVO has announced the creation of a Funding Commission to study future financial provision after 2010 for the whole civil society sector.

Almost two-thirds of charity leaders still believe the general situation of their own organisation will improve over the next year, despite also believing that the state of the sector's finances and the general UK economy, will get worse.

Museum staff across the country have picketed their museums as part of an ongoing dispute over pay. Staff at the Science Museums in London (pictured) and Swindon, the National Railway Museum in York and Bradford’s National Media Museum walked out on Friday 13 June in protest at what they claim is a real-terms pay decrease offer from the National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI), which operates all four establishments.