The Oakland Institute has launched a campaign against Iowa-based investor Bruce Rastetter and fellow investors in the industrial agricultural corporation AgriSol Energy’s attempt to acquire 325,000 hectares of land in Tanzania that is home to 162,000 people. According to the institute the proposed site is inhabited by former refugees from neighbouring Burundi.

At least seven children have died from a suspected diarrhoea outbreak which has affected over 6,000 children in two towns in Zimbabwe over the past week, a state newspaper said. 'Seven children died in Masvingo and Kadoma last week following a diarrhoea outbreak which has seen a total of 6,472 cases being recorded in the two towns,' The Sunday Mail reported. 'The main problem has always been unclean water and poor sanitation,' the newspaper quoted Portia Manangazira, director for disease control in the health ministry, as saying.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information says it has filed a lawsuit against the military council, prime minister, and minister of information for the misinformation and incitement against the protesters by the state TV during the events at Maspero. 'A group of Egyptians organized a peaceful March on 9 October that started from some areas in Cairo, heading to the area of Maspero. Once they had arrived there, violence erupted and nobody knows who instigated it. On the other hand, the Egyptian TV deployed all its vast potentials to outrage and incite the public opinion against the peaceful protesters.'

Almost half a million Ivoirians remain displaced five months after the country’s post-electoral civil conflict ended, afraid of returning to their homes for fear of reprisals, while a sluggish response to funding appeals means living conditions for many are getting worse. A 12 October report by NGOs Oxfam, CARE and the Danish Refugee Council warned of a two-thirds shortfall in the UN appeal for emergency funding to deal with around 450,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout the country, as living conditions for many deteriorated.

Developing countries, particularly from Africa, are concerned about attempts by industrialised nations to change the negotiating dynamic of the World Trade Organisation. They are worried that developed countries want to introduce new issues at the multilateral body’s eighth ministerial meeting later this year without first completing the unfinished Doha agreement. The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) trade negotiations, launched in 2001, were meant to correct the historical imbalances and asymmetries in the global trading system and were designed to enable poorer countries to integrate into the system.

The Libyan authorities have put the capital, Tripoli, on maximum alert after clashes between forces loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC) and supporters of the former leader, Mouamar Kadhafi, left three dead and 30 injured. The clashes in the capital between NTC combatants and a group of Colonel Kadhafi’s supporters, estimated at between 20 and 50 armed men, were in the districts of Abu Slim and Al-Hadba. Kadhafi, who disappeared after NTC forces took Tripoli on 22 August used his latest audio message broadcast by the Syrian channel Arrai, to rally his supporters to fight the NTC.

'How could they make this decision without us meeting first?' asked a visibly bemused President Museveni at a news conference, called in reaction to Parliament’s unanimous decision to set up an ad hoc committee to probe bribery claims in the oil sector. The NRM leader has every reason to worry when trusted cadres such as Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa, Chief Whip John Nasasira and Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, who many believe has inscribed his name on the presidential door as Mr Museveni’s successor, are publicly humiliated by corruption allegations. Talk is rife of a silent rebellion within the party - not least inspired by the secrecy shrouding the oil deals.

Issue No.21 of Amandla Magazine is now available. Apart from a focus on the issue of unemployment, it contains a Q&A with Ronnie Kasrils and articles on the euro crisis, the Occupy Wall Street protests and the arms deal.

There are only four weeks left until the closing date for all Stage 1 2012 STARS Impact Award applications: the deadline is 1pm GMT, Monday 7 November 2011. To apply to the 2012 Impact Awards, visit you can apply online or download the application form. If you have any questions about the application process, contact us at: [email][email protected] The STARS Impact Awards identify and support local organisations that achieve excellence in the provision of services to disadvantaged children and that demonstrate effective management practices.

The latest edition of the 'We Have Faith - Act Now for Climate Justice' newsletter, which deals with climate change and news in the lead up to the COP17 event in Durban, is now available.

President Jacob Zuma needs more time to decide if any remedial action will be taken against Minister of Cooperative and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka and national police commissioner General Bheki Cele. On Monday, Zuma's spokesperson Mac Maharaj told the Mail & Guardian the president is still 'applying his mind' on the two matters, despite them first having come to his attention several months ago. Shiceka and Cele find themselves in hot water after Public Protector Thuli Madonsela delivered two separate, damning findings into the duo's actions while undertaking official duties.

The law does not necessarily make much difference when it comes to child labour: in Guinea and Mauritania the worst forms of child labour persist despite it being banned by law, leading child protection experts to call for a better understanding of the dynamics behind it. West Africa adviser for child protection at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joachim Theis told IRIN: 'Until now there has been very little discourse which makes the links between strategies taken by parents to find a solution for each child in the context of informal employment, and the application of international norms.'

The Eugene Terre'Blanche murder trial was expected to enter its second week in the high court sitting in Ventersdorp on Monday. Last week, seven witnesses took the stand. Five of them testified that the two farmworkers accused of killing the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader had confessed to the crime. Terre'Blanche's former employees, Chris Mahlangu and a minor, are accused of beating and hacking him to death in his North West farmhouse on 3 April last year.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on the international community to give rural women the same access to productive resources as men, noting the huge benefits that would ensue. 'Despite the heavy responsibility rural women shoulder, they lack equal access to opportunities and resources,' Ban stated in a message, released ahead of the International Day of Rural Women.

Human rights activists have launched a project expected to provide free legal assistance to inmates on death row. The development will also see the mitigation of the inmates’ sentences in the High Court. The project is part of an ongoing advocacy to scrap the death penalty in the country. Under the project, planned initially to benefit at least 15 death row inmates, human rights activists will also lobby for law reforms and conduct public education for various stakeholders as well as dissemination of sentencing guidelines.

The main aim of this Timberline report is to question the claims made by Green Resources Ltd (GRL) in pursuit of CDM registration for its Idete project, as well as to expose and highlight the
problematic nature of market-based climate change mitigation projects. Findings from studies on tree plantation afflicted areas in other countries were used for comparison and to inform the Tanzanian study so as to identify common issues and trends and therefore help establish the likely impacts of similar tree plantations in Tanzania.

Is ‘citizen action’ anything other than the struggle of people to right what they perceive as wrongs and limit the power of the cruel and the unjust? Participants at a conference in the Hague, organised by Hivos, under the title 'The Changing Face of Citizen Action: A Knowledge Exploration' noted the common assumption in the room that 'citizen action' would inevitably lead to more advancement of values the room shared - more democracy, more social justice, more respect for universal rights. But in some parts of the world, 'citizen action' is mobilising fiercely against abortion, against LGBT rights, against other sects and ethnicities.

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...

Rapid urbanisation is being portrayed – by the UN, the World Bank and many others – as a potential developmental 'silver bullet' for Africa. Cities, we are frequently told, will be the drivers of economic growth and poverty reduction on the continent in the years to come. But larger concentrations of people are not automatically generating benefits – quite the opposite, says this article. 'The social, economic and political consequences of policymakers continuing to ignore the best available demographic research could be grim. For example, appropriate food supply networks and health services require sound knowledge of population distribution and migration patterns.'

Mawingu internally displaced persons stormed out of the camp on Monday protesting government’s failure to purchase land for them. Led by their chairman Peter Kariuki and other officials, they regretted that the government had failed to respond to their request to have them resettled on a 6,000 acre piece of land that they had identified at Wiyumuririe in Laikipia.