The Dutch Parliament has voted to suspend the deportation of young asylum seekers who have been in the Netherlands longer than five years at least until a new government is formed. The vote was taken during the first parliamentary sitting since elections. Earlier this year, a bill was put forward that would grant residency to refugees under 18 who had been in the Netherlands for eight years or more. There was insufficient support for the proposal in the previous parliament, but now there would be a majority.

At least six people have been killed in a firefight after gunmen attacked an army barracks in Guinea-Bissau, military sources say. They say the army repelled the pre-dawn attack just outside the capital Bissau, killing six 'rebels'. The raid is likely to further heighten tensions in the West African nation, where the military seized power in a coup in April.

The Second Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA II) ended on Saturday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with participants urging African negotiators and researchers to step up efforts to further strengthen the role of science in the negotiations process. The two-day conference that met ahead of the Doha Climate Change Conference scheduled for December also urged developed countries to raise the level of ambition in order to set the right carbon price which would in turn encourage investment in mitigation activities.

Reporters Without Borders has said it is deeply shocked by yesterday (21 October) evening’s attempt to murder Radio Shabelle journalist Mohamed Mohamud Turyare, who was shot four times in the chest and abdomen by two gunmen as he left a Mogadishu mosque. He was rushed to the capital’s Madina Hospital, where he underwent immediate surgery. Doctors said after the operation that his injuries no longer posed a threat to his life.

On Friday 12 October, the Democratic Governance & Rights Unit (DGRU) of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Sonke Gender Justice Network, lodged a formal complaint with the office of the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) calling on the CGE to investigate the lack of gender transformation in the judiciary. Research conducted by the DGRU reveals that at the Constitutional Court only two of eleven justices are women and at the Supreme Court of Appeal only seven of 24 judges are women.

Since a spate of attacks on Côte d’Ivoire’s army and police bases in August, several civilians have been rounded up, beaten and detained for ransom, say rights groups and ex-detainees who accuse the Côte d’Ivoire Republican Forces (FRCI – also part of the army) of violation and mistreatment. In recent months, armed gangs the authorities say are suspected supporters of ousted president Laurent Gbagbo have raided military and police bases in and around the commercial capital Abidjan as well as a power station and a border post. The attack on the power station in mid-October was the first non-military target since the ambushes begun.

Sudanese rebels said they had shelled the main city in the oil-producing South Kordofan state near the border with South Sudan after coming under artillery fire from government troops, the third bout of shelling in the past two weeks. Sudan's army has been fighting SPLM-North rebels in the state since June last year, shortly before South Sudan seceded from Sudan, but the South Kordofan capital Kadugli has been mostly isolated from the fighting.

The number of Somali refugees in a series of camps in an arid, harsh area of south-eastern Ethiopia has passed the 170,000 mark, making Dollo Ado the world's second largest refugee complex. 'Dollo Ado is now the world's biggest refugee camp after Dadaab in Kenya,' UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic said, adding that although the rate of arrivals at Dollo Ado has slowed this year, people are continuing to flee conflict and insecurity in southern and central parts of Somalia. Many cite fear of harassment and forced recruitment by armed groups who control large rural areas of the country.

Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by a recent wave of arrests of journalists in Zimbabwe and urges the authorities to stop trying to intimidate independent privately-owned media and to take measures against those responsible for physical attacks on reporters. 'This sudden wave of lawsuits and incidents involving the police does not bode well for the coming months,' Reporters Without Borders said. 'Journalists must be guaranteed the freedom to cover political stories without fear of abusive criminal prosecutions. We are very worried about the judicial harassment of independent journalists and media in the past few weeks.'

This article on the Transparency International explores the connections between land, corruption and climate change. 'Transparency International Kenya has three Advocacy and Legal Advice Centres, which give free and confidential legal counsel to victims or witnesses of corruption. Around a quarter of the cases received at our centre in Mombasa relate to land, totalling 58 since September 2011.'

The Makause Creative Youth Brigade (MCYB) and the Makause Community Development Forum (Macodefo) are organising a march on Friday, 19 October 2012 against police brutality at Primrose Police Station (near Germiston in Ekurhuleni). The march forms part of the ‘One Makause, One Community Police Brutality Campaign’ under the Asihambi Land, Housing & Zero Evictions Campaign.

Date: Friday, 19th October 2012
Time: 12h30 pm
Venue: People will congregate at the Makause Sports Ground at the Makause Informal Settlement in Primrose and proceed to the Primrose Police Station to hand over a Memorandum to the Primrose SAPS.

The Makause community is uniting for a better, safer and crime-free kasi and demands:

· an end to police brutality
· an end to forced bribery/corruption
· proper investigation of un-attended to cases of crime
· an end to police politics and support of mob groups
· arrest of the mob group that attacked the Macodefo leadership and
destroyed the community office
· an urgent response to reported crimes.

This march to Primrose Police Station is to say:

* Enough is Enough!
* Never and Never Again!
* An Injury to One is an Injury to All!
* Makause Cannot Be Divided by the Police!
* We Have a Right to Survive/Life!
* We Have the Right to Organize, Gather, Assemble, Picket & Demonstrate!

For more information contact:

General Moyo: 073 430 7006 / [email]generalmoyo@gmail.com
Michael Dzai: 083 5023863

Journalist George Borteh, the Acting Vice President of the Judicial Reporters Association of Liberia (JURAL) and a reporter for The New Republic newspaper, was thrown in prison on 12 October, 2012, after taking a photo of Police Director Chris Massaquoi at the Temple of Justice in Monrovia. Borteh was detained for more than three hours. Massaquoi was offended by the action of the journalist. He questioned Borteh as to why he took his photo and the journalist replied by saying: 'You are a public figure on public grounds and I am taking [a] picture for record['s] sake.'

As part of its contribution to issues-based campaigns towards the December polls, the Economic Justice Network (EJN) has stated it is of the view that transforming agriculture and tackling the production and marketing constraints of small scale farmers, men and women, in rural Ghana, where all the problems of poverty are sharply experienced should be one of the topical issues as the country heads towards the December polls.

With few career options, Sudanese women are increasingly building up their own businesses from scratch - earning themselves financial benefits and freedom. Many women are trying out their chances in the informal economy, which offers them flexible working hours as well as an opportunity to try out their creative new business ideas. Often their customers are women, especially educated or working women.

Tunisian journalists went on strike on Wednesday, after months of rising tensions with the Islamist-led government, which is accused of curbing press freedom and seeking to control public media groups. The strike was widely observed at those press groups at the heart of the controversy that has gripped Tunisia since the summer, with staff accusing the ruling coalition of manipulating editorial content by appointing loyal directors.

Uganda should deploy oil revenues to create universal old age pensions and universal health insurance to make a more humane society. This would be a real investment in the future of the nation. So says Dr. Ezra Suruma, Uganda’s former Minister of Finance, in this exclusive interview with Oil in Uganda. He accepts that it will be prudent to place some of the revenues in an Investment Fund - because too much money flowing too fast into the general budget would be difficult to absorb. But, he argues, all Ugandan citizens should become individual shareholders in the Investment Fund, in order to ensure that each and every citizen benefits directly through annual dividends - and also to create citizen-shareholder pressure for transparent and corruption-free management of the funds.

Riots erupted in Zanzibar’s Stone Town and Tanzania’s commercial city of Dar es Salaam Wednesday following the arrest and disappearance of Muslim clerics. According to information posted by the US Embassy in Tanzania on its website, there have been roadblocks, tyre burning, rock throwing and rioting in Darajani, Mbuyuni and Kisonge in Zanzibar following the disappearance of Sheikh Farid Haji.

Malawi's President Joyce Banda has asked the African Union to intervene in the country's border dispute with Tanzania, state media has reported. The southern African nation broke off talks with Tanzania earlier this month over the border on Lake Malawi, which is potentially rich in oil and gas. Malawi disputes Tanzania's claim to half the lake - Africa's third biggest.

A week and a half after the station was first shut down, the International Press Institute reiterated its call for the Puntland authorities to allow Horseed FM radio to resume operations, and further called for the Puntland authorities to stop ordering the blocking of Horseed FM’s website. The executive director of Horseed Media, Mahad Mussa, told IPI from the organisation’s offices in the Netherlands that Horseed’s FM station is still off air, more than a week after its Bosaso headquarters were shut down.

Zimbabweans are showing the evidence of having been torn in all directions in the transitional period. They have been scarred by the party political wars since the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from late 2000 onwards first posed an electoral challenge to the Zimbabwe African National Union? Patriotic Front (ZANU?PF). Zimbabweans, as represented in this stratified?random and nationally representative sample from Freedom House, are not sure it seems on what to believe and how to relate to political and economic circumstances.