Libya said on Sunday it welcomed an African Union panel formed to try to end the Libyan crisis and said it would facilitate its work, while condemning an Arab League resolution calling for a no-fly zone over the country. The African Union announced on Friday the leaders of South Africa, Uganda, Mauritania, Congo and Mali would form a panel that will travel to Libya shortly.

While the South African Department of Trade and Industry has stepped up criminalisation of pirated books, movies, and music, consumer patterns show that obtaining pirated media is widely accepted. In fact, a case study in Hanover Park, a poor neighbourhood outside Cape Town where the Association of Progressive Communication investigated CD piracy, most residents made no distinction between pirated and legal goods. Some people interviewed found the concept of piracy completely foreign, and all respondents felt that their use of pirated goods was legitimate, given their economic situation. Average consumers feel they have no choice but to turn to cheaper alternatives because the price of original goods is simply too high for them to afford.

The Unemployed People's Movement (UPM) reports that two people from the eThembeni shack settlement died in a fire. The organisation said the community could not successfully fight the fire on their own as the taps are very few and very far away. The fire brigade could not get into the settlement because there is no road leading in to it. The fire came as the UPM held a vigil. One of the reasons for the vigil was to highlight 'concern at the criminalisation of our struggles and movements'.

South Africa is waiting for another 1976 uprising to happen, Cosatu General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Wednesday. Vavi said the level of violent protests over service delivery showed people’s frustrations with a lack of implementation in solving rampant unemployment, poverty and lacking infrastructure. 'Somebody used the term that Johannesburg is living between a ring of fire with people barricading their streets everywhere to say we’ve had enough.'

The Nyeleni Newsletter is now available online in three languages: English, Spanish and French. This edition of the newsletter has a special on factory farming. The newsletter is published every two months on the website. Each newsletter comes with an additional document - a list of reports and more references that can be downloaded from the same website.

In response to a pelting critique from academics, economists and grassroots organisers worldwide, the 2011 'State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report' plans to address the controversies surrounding a development scheme that many believe to have failed. A tempest of questions, censures and confusions has battered at the doors of Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs), whose small-scale loans many are calling 'micro band-aids' on the wound of inequality that the world is currently nursing.

The latest newsletter from African Peoples Advocacy (APA) contains articles on the plight of migrants in Libya, the situation in Cote d'Ivoire, the Ugandan elections and further information about events and activities.

More than 450,000 people have fled their homes because of the crisis in Ivory Coast, the UN refugee agency says. Some 370,000 people have fled their homes in Abidjan, while a further 77,000 have crossed into neighbouring Liberia, according to the UNHCR. It said the 'unfolding tragedy' in Ivory Coast had been overlooked while international attention has been focused on North Africa.

A report recently released by Tax Justice Network-Africa, 'Tax Us If You Can: Why Africa should stand up for tax justice', addresses both domestic and international challenges facing African countries in their efforts to raise domestic resources to finance development. The report emphasises the importance of tax noting that, 'In Africa, tax revenue will be essential for establishing independent states of free citizens, less reliant on foreign aid and the vagaries of external Capital.'

Reporters Without Borders has carried out a new survey of online freedom of expression for World Day Against Cyber-Censorship, marked on 12 March. 'One in three of the world’s Internet users does not have access to an unrestricted Internet,' Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. 'Around 60 countries censor the Internet to varying degrees and harass netizens. At least 119 people are currently in prison just for using the Internet to express their views freely. These are disturbing figures.'

The Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD) is a resource for conducting research and analysis on various forms of social and political unrest in Africa. It includes over 6,000 social conflict events across Africa from 1990 to 2009, including riots, strikes, protests, coups, and communal violence.

A press freedom watchdog took Egypt and Tunisia off its online censorship blacklist following their recent revolutions and awarded a web media award to Tunisian news bloggers. In Egypt, 'the heavy filtering (of Internet sites) at the height of the revolution has reportedly ended,' said Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in an annual report on the eve of its World Day Against Cyber-Censorship.

The government of the ousted Egyptian strongman, Hosni Mubarak, at one time considered the use of force if upstream countries threatened its historical rights to the use of the Nile waters. The administration was incensed by riparian states insistence on using the Nile for irrigation and other water consuming projects. According to confidential cables, sent to Washington, by American diplomats based in Cairo, the Mubarak administration viewed access to its quota of Nile waters as a national security issue, 'and a creation of a system that threatens this quota will be seen as an existential threat'.

TWAS Fellowships: 2011 Call for Applications
Postgraduate, postdoctoral, visiting scholar and advanced research fellowships available to scientists from developing countries

TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, is now accepting applications for its postgraduate, postdoctoral, visiting scholars and advanced research fellowship programmes.
The fellowships are offered to scientists from developing countries and are tenable at centres of excellence in various countries in the South, including Brazil, China, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan and Thailand.

Eligible fields include: agricultural and biological sciences, medical and health sciences, chemistry, engineering, astronomy, space and earth sciences, mathematics and physics.

Please see > Programmes > Exchange > Fellowships (http://twas.ictp.it/prog/exchange/fells/fells-overview) for the latest information regarding all these programmes, including eligibility criteria, deadlines, etc, and to download the application forms and guidelines.

Women scientists are especially encouraged to apply.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has called on President Jacob Zuma to take 'stern action' against national police chief Bheki Cele and Public Works Minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde over the controversial R500 million lease for new SAPS headquarters. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s report described as unlawful actions by both departments in procuring the Sanlam Middestad building in Pretoria.

In 2007 hundreds of families living in shacks across the new ‘integrated’ township of Delft in Cape Town were moved into houses they had been waiting for since the end of apartheid. But soon they were told that the move had been illegal and they were kicked out of their new homes. They built shacks next to the road opposite the housing project and organised themselves into the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign. Written toward the end of the struggle on the pavements, this anthology is testimony, poetry and an expression of the fight to bring about change. Hear an interview with

The first issue of the Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration (OxMo) is now available. This new student-run publication offers 11 short essays, personal accounts and academic articles. Titles include:
- The Politics of Social Exclusion: Asylum Support Provisions in the UK's Draft Immigration Bill 2009
- An Epic Journey towards a Refugee Visa
- A Culture of Disbelief or Denial? Critiquing Refugee Status Determination in the United Kingdom
- 'Come, we kill what is called "persecution life"': Sudanese Refugee Youth Gangs in Cairo'.

Many people living with HIV continue to face unfair discrimination in various aspects of their lives, says social justice organisation SECTION27. 'SECTION27 often receives reports from people who are denied access to insurance products solely on the basis that they are HIV positive, or are offered cover at what appear to be highly inflated prices. The practice of denying cover has gone on for more than two decades, with little change. And yet the implications of HIV infection for health status and life expectancy have changed dramatically over the same period.'

Representatives of the parties to the Western Sahara dispute, Morocco and the Frente Polisario, have wrapped up another round of talks, during which both sides continued to reject each other’s proposal as a sole basis for future negotiations, United Nations envoy Christopher Ross said. 'The proposals of the two parties were again presented,' said a communiqué read by Mr. Ross, the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Western Sahara at the end of the two-day meeting, held in Malta. 'By the end of the meeting, each party continued to reject the proposal of the other as a sole basis for future negotiations,' it added.

African Women and Child Feature Service has produced a 24-page special newspaper that looks at the gains, challenges and obstacles women have faced - particularly in relation to advancing in leadership and education. 'Strength of a Woman' takes stock of women's progress 25 years after the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies and 16 years after the Beijing Platform for Action.