The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has condemned sustained deadly violence against journalists following the killing of young journalist in Mogadishu. Zakariye Mohamed Mohamud Moallim, a young cameraman, working as freelance journalist was shot dead on Sunday evening (16 September 2012) in Nasib Bundo neighbourhood of Shibis district in Mogadishu. Men armed with pistols shot the journalist in the head and chest, according to family members. Zakariye died on the spot and the killers escaped from the scene, as said by eyewitnesses.

The UN Human Rights Office has released a new publication on sexual orientation and gender identity in international human rights law. It sets out the source and scope of some of the core legal obligations that States have to protect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. The 60-page booklet is designed as a tool for States, to help them better understand the nature of their obligations and the steps required to meet them, as well as for civil society activists, human rights defenders and others seeking to hold Governments to account for breaches of international human rights law.

The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation’s Justice and Reconciliation in Africa programme has released a new Policy Brief entitled ‘Reconciling Kenya: Opportunities for constructing a peaceful and socially cohesive nation’. The Brief forms part of an ongoing project focused on promoting national cohesion and reconciliation in Kenya, which will be jointly implemented by the IJR, the Kenyan National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sweden over the next two years. The project pieces together the initiatives taken in Kenya towards reconciliation since the post-election violence in 2007/2008 and gives recommendations to different actors on the way forward to consolidate national cohesion and reconciliation.

The University Council that oversees the affairs of public universities in Malawi has announced a 25 per cent increase in salaries of university teachers. But the Polytechnic, the constituent college of the University of Malawi in Blantyre, which is already on a month-long industrial strike, refused to immediately accept the offer, while Chancellor College in the eastern city of Zomba said the offer was a fair deal. Both constituent colleges were demanding a 113 per cent salary hike, citing the recent 49 per cent devaluation of the Malawi currency, the kwacha.

The Gambian president has suspended the execution of prisoners on death row, amid an international outcry. In a statement, Yahya Jammeh said he was responding to 'numerous appeals'. Nine prisoners have been executed since his vow in August to clear death row. Another 37 inmates remain on death row.

This issue of South Bulletin focuses on how developing countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa are now facing an economic slowdown with a deterioration in GDP growth, exports and lending conditions. The effects of the Eurozone recession and the US slowdown are now increasingly felt in the South. Another analytical article 'Rethinking growth strategies is imperative for the South' by South Centre’s Chief Economist Yilmaz Akyuz shows how the favourable international conditions that led to the South’s high growth in the past decade have now turned unfavourable, resulting in the current economic difficulties. Thus the developing countries have to prepare for new growth and development strategies.

In Sudan’s newspaper district in Khartoum East, dozens of people sit beneath the trees sipping tea or reading newspapers. Most are journalists who once worked for the 10 newspapers that were either forced closed by the country’s security services or because of economic constraints that resulted after the government raised printing taxes in an attempt to prevent the media from reporting on anti-government demonstrations. Mohamed Ahmed, a former journalist for the Ajrass Elhuriya newspaper, which was closed in July 2011, is one of them. 'I have been sitting under the trees for a year and a half because the government closed my newspaper and other newspapers, that consider me to be opposed to the government, are afraid to hire me.'

'It’s possible that two children died so that you could have that mobile phone,' says Jean-Bertin, a 34-year-old Congolese activist who wants to end the 'absolute silence' around the crimes committed in his country to exploit strategic raw materials like coltan. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has at least 64 per cent of worldwide reserves of coltan, the colloquial African name for a dull black ore composed of two minerals, columbite and tantalite.

South Africa’s beleaguered government continues its security crackdown in Marikana, with the South African National Defence Force announcing that it deployed 1,000 soldiers to the restive mining town in the North West. 'It seems as if both government and Lonmin misread the situation on the platinum belt, and now what seemed resolvable might become an untenable situation,' Bishop Jo Seoka, president of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) said in a statement released by the Bench Marks Foundation. And as South Africans react with alarm to the scale of the security presence in Marikana, Sekoa believes the government’s most recent attempts to assert control over the striking workers threatens the gains made in negotiations.

Some 1,000 Chadian migrants - most of them children separated from their families - are waiting for aid in the village of N’Gbouboua in the Lac region of western Chad having fled Boko Haram-related violence in Nigeria, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). With more arriving each day - some 100 have arrived in the last 48 hours according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) - the food situation is getting desperate, say aid workers.

Zimbabwe’s Information minister has threatened to revoke operating licenses of private newspapers that attack President Robert Mugabe. Media, Information and Publicity minister Webster Shamu from President Mugabe’s Zanu PF party told mourners at the burial of a veteran fighter in Zimbabwe’s liberation war that the private media was 'denigrating President Mugabe and the country’s leadership without jurisdiction'.

Twitter, the much beloved social networking site, is set to take on disease outbreaks, after HHS officials announced the release of a new Web-based application tool available to public health officials. US health officials say they can use data gained through the app to complement other health surveillance systems in identifying emerging health issues and as an early warning of possible public health emergencies in a community.

The authorities in Uganda have charged a British theatre producer, David Cecil, for staging a play about the condition of gay people in the country. He appeared in court accused of 'disobeying lawful orders', because the play 'The River and the Mountain' was performed without authorisation. Mr Cecil was denied bail. He faces two years in jail if convicted.

This discussion paper from The Corner House sets out some lessons for political strategy suggested by the experience of climate change campaigning over the past 15 years. It outlines the dangers faced by advocacy NGOs of becoming 'patzers' (blunderers) and clients of more sophisticated political actors.

Land used to power European cars with biofuels for one year could produce enough wheat and maize to feed 127 million people, Oxfam reveals ahead of today’s important EU Energy Ministers’ meeting. With the world’s poorest at greater risk of hunger as a result of spiraling food prices, the international agency is calling on the EU to rethink its dangerous love affair with biofuels. In a new GROW campaign report, 'The Hunger Grains', Oxfam warns that Europe’s growing appetite for biofuels is pushing up global food prices and driving people off their land, resulting in deeper hunger and malnutrition in poor countries.

The community located near the Lonmin-owned platinum mine which has been the scene of a bitter strike, wages a daily battle with air and noise pollution, intense crime and appalling living conditions. With no access to sanitation and garbage removal, the surrounding plateau is strewn with rotting rubbish. Nearby streams are polluted by sewage as thousands live out realities far from the billion-dollar industry they clock their cards into each morning.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki lost his temper and burst into anger when a journalist answered a phone call during an interview in the Qatari capital, Doha, a video aired by Al Arabiya showed. While Marzouki was speaking about corruption in an interview with a journalist, another journalist nearby answered a phone call, prompting the Tunisian president to burst in anger calling him 'shameless' and 'idiot'.

In response to rising HIV prevalence, Uganda's government has announced a strategy to reduce new HIV infections by up to 30 per cent by 2015, but activists have cast doubt on its ability to achieve this ambitious goal. Uganda's HIV prevalence has risen from 6.4 per cent to 7.3 per cent over the past five years. In August, the Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) released a revised National HIV Prevention Strategy aimed at 'increasing the adoption of safer sexual behaviour and reduction of risk-taking behaviour, attaining critical coverage of effective HIV prevention service, creating a sustainable enabling environment that mitigates the underlying structural drivers of the epidemic, re-engaging leadership and energizing coordination of HIV prevention, and improving strategic information on HIV prevention'.

A new report by Oxfam, a leading international relief agency, warns that climate change will increase the frequency of large spikes in global food prices, leading to more hungry people around the world. Besides climate change, rapid population growth, higher per capita incomes, rapid urbanization, changing diets in developing countries and rising demand for biofuel feedstocks, are exerting unprecedented pressure on the global food system.

In this briefing, the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) deal with the Pioneer/Pannar seed merger, outlining the evidence led by the ACB in opposing the merger, what is at stake for South Africa if the merger is approved and the extent to which the merger will deepen structural imbalances in the South African economy.