A three-day strike beginning 4 May has been announced by the Uganda Law Society as an expression of displeasure at the government’s high-handed clampdown on the walk-to-work protests against high fuel prices. At an extra-ordinary meeting of the Law Society held in Kampala, it was also agreed that other professionals be asked to join in this show of disapproval against the excessive and disproportionate use of force by the police, army and other security agencies in breaking up peaceful protests.

Minister Louis Farrakhan warns Barack Obama about the US's intervention in Libya and CIA activity [Information Clearing House video], while Cornel West discusses the failure of the Obama administration to tackle the root causes of injustice in the US and beyond [Al Jazeera video].

Morocco's Tourist hub city of Marrakech was hit by a bomb blast in late April that ripped through a popular restaurant at lunchtime, the Argana, overlooking Jamaa Lefna Square. The blast, according to officials killed 16 people most of whom were foreigners. The attack occurred as the country witnesses a wave of peaceful demonstrations calling for democratic change. Bloggers and netizens have been quick to react, sending instant eyewitness accounts, as reported by Global Voices.

Sierra Leone re-introduced local government councils in 2004 after a 30-year absence; the experience of the last six years is prompting questions about how to successfully introduce effective democratic authority and responsiveness at the local level in a country where few have experience of active participation in governance. Devolution of responsibility to local councils is behind schedule, with responsibility for key services such as water and waste management and infrastructure like roads among the important areas remaining under the central government's control.

Dozens of people have reportedly been killed in the main city of Abidjan in fighting between Ivory Coast troops and the remnants of a militia loyal to deposed leader Laurent Gbagbo. 'We have seen many dead. We recovered 40 bodies over two hours, but we were forced to stop because he had no room left in our van,' said Franck Kodjo, an official at the International Committee of the Red Cross, adding at least five corpses were from last Tuesday's fighting. A commander for the Ivorian army, known as the FRCI, said the remaining pro-Gbagbo fighters in the Abidjan neighbourhood of Yopougon were mostly Liberian mercenaries hired in the aftermath of the November election dispute.

A gay couple, Akwasi Boakye and Kwame Amankwa, got married on Easter Sunday in Kumasi, Ghana. The wedding, attended by hundreds of members of LGBTI community, started at 10am on Sunday and lasted all night. The couple have been banished from the town. The couple has allegedly disappeared on a honeymoon to Accra.

A controversial Facebook game developed by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) with funding from ECHO, the European Commission’s humanitarian agency, and designed to raise awareness of Dadaab camp on the Kenyan-Somali border has been pulled from the internet just days after the launch amid claims that it is in bad taste and dehumanizes refugees. Julie Laduron, ECHO’s communications officer, confirmed that the European humanitarian body had removed the game from its Facebook page and main site. 'Of course everyone has some different sensibilities about the game so for the moment it is suspended,' she said.

The Jadaliyya website is an independent ezine produced by ASI (Arab Studies Institute), a network of writers associated with the Arab Studies Journal (www.ArabStudiesJournal.org). It is motivated by the need to discuss the 'Arab World' or the 'Middle East'.

An independent daily newspaper critical of Zimbabwe's president says thieves raided its offices and stole computer hard drives and the editor's laptop. No other items were stolen. In front page headlines last week, the paper called on President Robert Mugabe, 87, to step down.

The latest statistics by JSE-listed job placement company, Adcorp, show that since January 2000 permanent employment declined by 20.9 per cent while contract and other forms of employment increased by 64.1 per cent. This, says the company’s March employment index, means that only 1.9 million South Africans were employed into permanent jobs while 2.4 million were hired into temporary jobs since 2000. Samela Manene, the general secretary of the National Council of Trade Unions, said there was nothing much for workers to celebrate because inequality and unemployment had risen, despite the country’s good labour laws.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, on one of the days on which opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye was arrested, attacked academics and religious leaders at a conference that brought together key stakeholders, including senior religious and political leaders, academicians, media experts, heads of security agencies, development partners, civil society organisations and cultural leaders from around the country. Museveni was irked by what he described as lies spread by some academicians.

The Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, has issued a statement saying they are 'alarmed' by the implications of the situation in Libya for migrant workers and members of their families. 'The Committee is equally concerned about the difficulties encountered by migrant workers and members of their families trying to leave Libya, either to return to their countries of origin or to seek protection from the violations and threats facing them by claiming asylum in third countries. In this context, the Committee is concerned about the dangerous interception of migrants at sea and at inland borders.'

At least three Somali immigrants have been shot and killed by border guards in Mozambique. The men were among nine traveling on foot through Tanzania headed to South Africa when they were sprayed by bullets from Mozambican forces, according to a member of the group.

Judge Nathan Erasmus ruled recently that the DA-controlled Cape Town municipality had violated the human and constitutional rights of residents of Makhaza in Khayelitsha by installing unenclosed toilets. He also dismissed the city's and Western Cape premier Helen Zille's argument that residents were consulted and had agreed to enclose the toilets at their own cost.

The Great Green Wall project aims to plant a line of trees nearly 8,000 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide. This green belt would pass through 11 countries in the Sahel, from Senegal to Djibouti. It hopes to stop the desert from expanding and swallowing farmland. Many are happy with what is being achieved, but others are not, reports Farm Radio Weekly. Aliou Sow is a farmer in Senegal. He complains bitterly that the authorities planted trees in his community without consultation. While farmers travel miles on foot or by donkey to fetch water for the villages of Tessekeré, Amaly and Widou, wells are being dug specifically to irrigate nurseries for the Wall.

A heavily armed Sudanese military convoy entered the flashpoint border district of Abyei, sparking clashes that left up to 14 people dead, its chief administrator and a UN spokesman said on Tuesday, 3 May. The fighting broke out on Sunday when a Sudanese army major insisted on entering the disputed territory after the police tried to stop his convoy of six landcruisers mounted with machine guns and more than 200 troops, administrator Deng Arop Kuol told AFP.

Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries, with over half of its 22 million people living below the poverty line. It pays the lowest salaries in southern Africa, according to a recent report by accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Last year, violent riots against price increases left at least 14 dead, prompting the government to subsidise food and fuel.

A monument should be built for liberation songs and it should have its own precinct. This is according to Wally Mongane Serote, the poet, author and former MK soldier testifying in the hate speech trial in the Johannesburg High Court against ANC Youth League President Julius Malema. Defending Malema - who was charged by Afriforum, an Afrikaner minority group, for singing certain lines of the song Dubulu ’ibhunu (Kill the Boer) - Serote said the songs were 'as important as the Voortrekker monument', kept 'as a memory even after apartheid'.

Two senior opposition figures arrested in late April in Equatorial Guinea have been released, a senior party colleague said. Vicente Nze and Juan Manuel Nguema Esono of the main opposition Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS) party had been released late Friday (29 April), CPDS secretary general Placido Mico Abogo told AFP. Esono was detained for having put up a poster calling for a demonstration against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema on Sunday, 1 May, said a CPDS statement.

Anglo American plc has offered medical treatment to 14 former miners, who have brought a test case against its South African subsidiary, but it won't accept liability for the silica dust levels in apartheid-era gold mines that the former workers say caused their debilitating respiratory tract infections. If the test case succeeds it could open the door for tens of thousands of former mine workers to claim damages from companies such as Anglo, resulting in compensation payouts worth billions of rands.