Amnesty International has called on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release, or charge with a recognizable criminal offence, more than 70 members of the Muslim Brotherhood group arrested this week. More than 150 people have been arrested since the Muslim Brotherhood chairman, Mohamed Badie', said on 9 October that the group will put up candidates in Egypt's parliamentary elections, scheduled for 29 November.

Ibrahim Bello says he can earn $23 in two hours extracting gold from the ground, more than he can make in two months from cultivating millet. Such is the economic draw of the 'gold rush', with impoverished farmers digging up rocks by hand in open mines, that many are in denial about its devastating consequences. At least 400 children have died from poisoning caused by illegal gold mining since March because the ore being unearthed around their villages contains high concentrations of lead, contaminating the air, soil and water.

FIFA, the world's governing body for football, announced Wednesday that it has provisionally suspended two of its executive committee members who allegedly demanded money in return for their votes in the bidding process for the 2018 World Cup.

Tanzania will go to the polls on October 30, 2010 and the general election campaign is well underway. As the campaigns heat up, presidential candidates and other candidates fighting for parliamentary seats are using new media tools to communicate with potential voters. Along with campaign rallies, which target the majority of the population, a small number of politicians have started to use social media tools such as blogs, online videos, Facebook and twitter to create deeper engagement with voters.

Mugabe Inc. has once again, in anticipation of forthcoming elections, vigorously begun to engage in exploitation through 'primitive accumulation' of resources via war vets, corrupt corporate execs and political cronies, writes Khadija Sharife in this article for Harvard International Review. Prior to the discovery of diamonds, specifically in Marange the big kahuna was land. This time around, legal concessions to Marange have been voided, with two South African companies granted right of access via fraudulent licenses.

In honour of its 10th anniversary and 500th issue, Pambazuka News was thrilled with web technology blog profile on our publication this week. A widely read site, ReadWriteWeb notes Pambazuka 'is an African website devoted to African news and analysis run by Africans' as part of 'a large, vibrant community of citizen journalists reporting the news from a pan-African point of view and with a focus on social justice'.

Women in Mali have produced a video about violence against women that was aired on Mali’s national television station. The topic is not openly discussed in Mali, and the film is one step towards more openness. The 20-minute video was aired primetime on ORTM, Mali’s national television station. It shows women victims of violence (anonymously) telling their story. The stories they tell are shown as illustrations made by a cartoonist.

A September US Court decision dismissed a case against Shell for human rights abuses in Nigeria, with the sweeping claim that corporations could not be held liable under international law for human rights abuses. And a UN Environmental Programme report on oil in the Niger Delta, due to be completed early next year and funded by Shell Oil, is reported to include, without alternate views, claims from Shell that 90 per cent of oil spills from its facilities are due to sabotage or attempts at theft rather than to negligence. The AfricaFocus Bulletin available through the link provided contains several articles and blog commentaries on the two new developments.

Media watchdogs see the 'invisible hand' of the ruling party behind a string of firings and resignations that have removed some of Egypt's most prominent government critics from their soapboxes just weeks before parliamentary elections. 'Oblique threats and backroom deals that are not visibly linked to the government have started silencing some of Egypt's most critical independent voices,' says Mohamed Abdel Dayem, Middle East and North Africa programme coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Feminine Action Union (UAF), a Moroccan association for the promotion of women's rights, announced on 13 October the creation of the National Observatory for the Improvement of Women's Image in the Media. The new centre will monitor violations against Moroccan women's dignity in the media, including in advertisement and art productions, at national, regional and international levels.

Nearly 400 people died in flooding in central and West Africa, with nearly 1.5 million people affected since the start of the rainy season in June, the United Nations said. It said last year floods killed almost 200 people in West Africa and affected over 800,000 others. Deaths resulting from flood were reportedly highest in Nigeria with 118, followed by Ghana (52), Sudan (50), Benin (43), Chad (24), Mauritania (21), Burkina Faso (16), Cameroon (13), Gambia (12), with other countries reporting less than 10 dead.

Masifundise is a community orientated development NGO in Cape Town, South Africa supporting fishing communities to mobilise and organise at community level to become strong and democratic role players in local community development. As an expanding organisation, Masifundise is desirous take its 30 years of South African experiences across the borders and work towards empowerment of fishing communities and fair re-distribution and management of the marine and freshwater resources.

The H.F. Guggenheim Foundation makes grants for scholarly research into problems of aggression and violence. One program is reserved for African Scholars under the age of 35, educated and living on the African continent. Selected applicants will attend a methods workshop to refine and improve their research plans in Accra, Ghana, in March 2011, and after submitting revised plans, will receive grants of $2000 each to support their fieldwork. In 2012 they will be funded to attend a professional conference to present their findings and will receive assistance in finding a publisher for their work.

If African countries had had the capacity to do climate change projections, their data could have been fed into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) assessments for the continent, said Richard Odingo, former vice-chair of the IPCC at one of the discussions ahead of the Seventh African Development Forum. The IPCC is still recovering from its controversial warning about the impact of climate change on food production in Africa, cited in its synthesis report. The warning turned out to have been based on a non-peer reviewed academic paper for three North African countries.

State security agents on 15 October 2010 allegedly blocked accredited journalists from covering the graduation ceremony at Great Zimbabwe University in Masvingo, officiated by President Robert Mugabe. According to the daily NewsDay the state security agents blocked journalists from entering the ceremony, demanding invitation cards similar to those issued to graduates and their relatives in addition to their accreditation cards.

Migration is an integral part of today’s process of global economic, social and political integration. Globally, more than 210 million people are estimated to be migrating. Around 105 million of them are women. There are diverse reasons and causes for migrating, but labour migration driven by large economic and social inequalities in the world is a key aspect in this context. The report 'Women's labour migration in the context of globalisation' offers an introduction to important contemporary political analysis on the influence of globalisation on women’s work, mobility and empowerment.

Twenty Nigerian citizens and a non-governmental organisation are challenging the indigene/settler dichotomy legally before the Federal High Court in Nigeria. The Federal High Court, Kaduna, presided over by Hon. Justice Mohammed Lawal Shuaibu, adjourned the case to 24 November 2010. The applicants contend that the indigene/settle dichotomy impacts negatively on the enjoyment of fundamental human rights enshrined in Nigeria’s constitution and African and international human rights law.

The ruling party in Zambia, the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) has suggested that certain government officials have been meeting opposition leader Michael Sata in a plea to recognise homosexuality, which according to activists is a conspiracy to disparage the opposition party. Amidst the recent tabling of the draft constitution currently siting before parliament, the Forum for Leadership Search revealed that it had information that some government officials have been meeting opposition leader Sata of the Patriotic Front (PF) to lobby for recognition of homosexuality in Zambia.

In an attempt to meet the development goal of universal access to primary education by 2015, Rwanda’s government has decided to reallocate a large part of its tertiary education budget to the primary education sector. As a result, thousands of students who rely on bursaries fear that they will have to abandon their studies if their allowances and merit-based college scholarships - which cover students' tuition fees, accommodation and living expenses - are scrapped.

A new international treaty on the safe use of modern biotechnology has just come into being, but developing countries say the real challenge lies in how its lofty ideas can be transferred into practical realities. The new supplementary protocol provides international rules and procedure on liability and redress that countries can seek for environmental damage to biodiversity resulting from the importation of living modified organisms (LMO).