Kenyans on the micro-blogging sites Twitter and Facebook on Sunday heavily criticised global television network CNN for depicting grenade blasts in Nairobi as an eruption of 'violence' in the country. The news channel was forced to pull down a video seen as misrepresenting events by depicting Saturday’s grenade attacks that killed six and injured 63 as being widespread.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Liberian authorities to ensure the safety of journalists who have been repeatedly threatened for exposing the practice of female genital mutilation in the country. Mae Azango, a reporter for the daily FrontPage Africa and the news website New Narratives, told CPJ she had gone into hiding after receiving several threats for an article she published about Liberian tribes practicing female genital mutilation on as many as two out of every three girls in the country. 'They left messages and told people to tell me that they will catch me and cut me so that will make me shut up,' Azango said.

Platform has released a new briefing analysing Uganda’s draft 'Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Bill'. The report – entitled 'The Ugandan Upstream oil law: A search in vain for accountability and democratic oversight', highlights the lack of parliamentary oversight, transparency, or consultation or involvement of affected communities in the proposed oil law. At the same time, the Bill does include clauses that restrict information flow and could potentially threaten or close down public debate.

On the 50th anniversary of Kenya’s independence, many minority and indigenous communities feel that despite some constitutional gains, increased ethnicization of politics has deepened their exclusion, making their situation worse today than it was in 2005, a new Minority Rights Group International (MRG) report shows. The report titled 'Kenya at 50', reviews the current status of minority and indigenous groups in Kenya, particularly how legal and policy changes over the last five years have responded to the social, economic and political challenges confronting them. ‘Despite the adoption of the new Constitution in 2010, very little has changed in the way the Kenyan state approaches the question of minorities,’ says Marusca Perazzi, MRG’s Governance Programme Coordinator.

London Mining Network has published a report calling on the government to include a review of regulatory regimes as part of the current discussion on the Financial Services Bill. Looking at eight case studies, the report, 'UK-Listed Mining Companies & the Case for Stricter Oversight', argues that many mining companies listed in London have very poor records of complicity in human rights abuse, environmental pollution or destruction of people’s cultures and livelihoods around the world.

Scores of people have been killed after the Somali armed Islamist group al-Shabab attacked Ethiopian troops in a town close to the border of both countries. There were differing accounts of which side bore the brunt of the fighting in Yurkud on Saturday, the worst involving Ethiopian troops since they returned in force to Somalia last year after withdrawing in early 2009. The fighting came the day after the African Union (AU) said Ethiopia planned to pull its troops out of the Horn of Africa nation by the end of April with soldiers from Djibouti, Uganda and Burundi taking their positions.

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika has in an astonishing broadside at perceived opponents including the country’s media warned them to desist from insulting him or they would be 'properly dealt with by the law'. A press release signed by State House press officer Albert Mungomo said that Malawi law provides for the 'total respect and protection' of the country's leader and that the authorities would no longer stand by and watch as the President of the Republic of Malawi was ridiculed.

This is a recording of a speech made by Arundhati Roy as a part of the Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Trust Lecture that was delivered on the 20th of January, 2012 at Xaviers college, Mumbai, India.

A suicide car bomber attacked a Catholic church in Nigeria on Sunday, killing at least 10 people in the blast, and the retaliatory violence that followed, officials said. The bomb detonated as worshippers attended the final Mass of the day at St. Finbar's Catholic Church in Jos, a city where thousands have died in the last decade in religious and ethnic violence.

Rafeef Ziadah is a Palestinian activist, academic and spoken word artist. She is currently a Phd. candidate in Political Science at York University in Toronto. She released her spoken word CD Hadeel in Novermber 2009. Here she performs 'Shades of Anger'.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

Continued fighting in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has forced more than 3,000 civilians into Uganda since the beginning of this year, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says. In a statement, the UNHCR said that an average of 50 people were passing over into Uganda every day this year, after a series of attacks on farms and villages in the volatile northeastern region.

More than 200 have been killed and several others are missing in fresh fighting between two rival ethnic groups in the troubled Jonglei state of South Sudan officials said, raising stakes ahead of a disarmament exercise set for mid this month. The fighting erupted Friday (9 March) morning in cattle camps in Akobo County when armed men from Pibor in the same state crossed in from the Ethiopia borders and attacked the area, Jonglei state Local Government minister Duop Lam said.

Brushing aside high-level UN appeals for cooperation to halt murder and violence against gays and lesbians around the globe, Muslim and Arab countries recently stalked out of a Human Rights Council panel to tackle the issue. The 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Pakistan described homosexuality as 'licentious behaviour' while African group leader Senegal said it was not covered by global human rights accords.

The Brazilian government is stepping up South-South aid, to strengthen the South American giant’s status as a donor country and its international clout. It now provides assistance to 65 countries, and its financial aid has grown threefold in the last seven years. A project to extend financing for food purchases to five countries in Africa has helped confirm that Brazil, traditionally a recipient of aid, has taken its place among the group of foreign donor countries.

Gambia has appealed for food aid after it said that 70 percent of its crops failed during the last growing season, extending the reach of a food crisis already hitting millions of people across Africa's Sahel strip. Gambia's agriculture ministry said the impact of poor rains last year had been exacerbated by high world food prices, crippling household incomes in the West African state, which has ridden out previous food crises.

Chances are that, no matter where you live on Earth, land acquisitions for mining, oil and gas might soon be at your door, says this report from the Gaia Foundation. 'This trend is now a major driver of land grabbing globally, and poses a significant threat to the world’s indigenous communities, farmers and local food production systems, as well as to precious water, forests, biodiversity, critical ecosystems and climate change. This report alerts global citizens to the dynamics in the extractive industries as a whole, and shows the alarming scale of this overall trend.'

Millions of newborns, children and mothers continue to die needlessly, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where rates of child mortality are the highest in the world. In this region one out of every eight children die before their fifth birthday, twenty times the rate of industrialised countries. Speaking at a Healthcare in Africa conference yesterday (WED) Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children, said although there has been a reduction in the under five mortality rate, the death of newborns was still the 'stubborn piece of the problem'.

Jolted by a public outcry since the start of the year, Nigeria's government has announced a series of measures to address oil industry corruption in the world's eighth biggest producer. It is an issue that may come to define Goodluck Jonathan's presidency. But two recent audits of the oil industry reviewed by Reuters show billions of dollars in irregularities despite years of government promises to clean it up.

A new gender law in Mauritius that requires one-third of candidates in local elections to be women represents another small step towards parity in decision-making. The gender quota is contained in the new Local Government Act that entered into force on 1 January 2012 and compels all political parties to field more women to contest in local elections due by April this year. Under Mauritian law, the town and village councillors are elected every five years and their main role is to ensure the smooth running of five towns and 108 villages, overseeing the provision of services such as garbage collection and road maintenance.