Rwanda has defiantly denied claims at the United Nations that it was aiding rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo and rejected UN chief Ban Ki-moon's summary of a meeting on the crisis, diplomats said. According to Ban, most states attending a high-level meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Congolese President Joseph Kabila 'condemned all forms of external support' to the rebels.

Nigeria and Saudi Arabia held high level talks to resolve diplomatic tensions generated by Riyadh's decision to deport 1,000 Nigerian women hajj pilgrims who were not accompanied by male guardians. Nigeria retaliated to the move by stopping all hajj flights to Saudi Arabia. Nigeria's minister of foreign affairs, Olugbenga Ashiru and Saudi Arabia's acting minister of foreign affairs, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz met in Washington and the former registered his protest to the Saudi move.

An attack on a political rally by uniformed soldiers is stoking fears of a reprise of state-sponsored violence against NGOs, human rights activists and parties opposed to President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF in the lead-up to a referendum on a draft constitution and scheduled parliamentary and presidential elections in 2013. Welshman Ncube, the leader of the smaller Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), addressed a gathering of about 1,000 people at the 21 September rally in Mutoka, in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland East Province, before the assault occurred.

One year after independence, many in South Sudan still do not have access to adequate healthcare. Among those desperate for treatment are victims of serious accidents or diseases. In South Sudan many are kept waiting for complicated and expensive procedures. There are few skilled surgeons in South Sudan and people with little money have scant hope of treatment.

All around the globe, peasants, pastoralists, fishers’ communities, rural women and indigenous peoples are losing their once effective control over significant areas of the world’s land, water, wetlands, pasturelands, fisheries and forests – including their right to decide how these natural resources will be used, when and by whom, at what scale and for what purposes, for generations to come. This Fact Sheet examines the involvement of The Netherlands in global land and water grabbing.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office has expressed frustration over the slow pace at which the government has adopted in cooperating with The Hague based court. The prosecutor’s office wrote to Attorney General Githu Muigai asking the State to hasten its promise to deliver certain information to the ICC. 'The slow pace of processing these requests is a source of frustration,' Mr Phakiso Mochochoko, Head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation said in the letter.

Sudan and South Sudan have reached a deal on border security and oil production that will allow oil exports from South Sudan through Sudan to resume, say spokesmen for both sides. The leaders of the two neighbouring countries made the partial breakthrough after four days of talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. But a number of key issues remain unresolved, including disputed regions.

Recently, Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court unanimously 'chastised' state security agents for torturing Jestina Mukoko, national director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, four years ago, reports blog Africa is a Country. 'They came at dawn, December 3, 2008. Armed men broke into the house of Jestina Mukoko, the only surviving parent of a teenage child who watched, helplessly. They took her, in unmarked cars, and held her incommunicado for 21 days. During that time, they beat her feet with rubber truncheons. They dumped her into solitary confinement. They forced her to kneel on gravel, to endure searing pain.'

The Tunisian journalists union (SNJT) on Tuesday called a general strike for 17 October over several issues, including demands for freedom of speech. The decision for the journalists to carry out their first ever strike was taken at a meeting held by the SNJT executive board following the breakdown of negotiations with the government on their demands. Differences between the government and the journalists centre on 'arbitrary' appointments in the state media, especially the two state television stations 'Watanya 1', 'Watanya 2' and 'Dar Assabah'.

Oumar Tely Diallo, a trainee-reporter of the privately-owned satirical Lynx-Lance newspaper, was on September 21, 2012 physically assaulted by a group of angry pro-government militants while covering a political riot. The attack on the journalist left him with torn clothes while his attackers made away with his camera, pen-drive, mobile telephone and some cash. According to the Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent, Diallo was covering a riot which pitted opposition militants against supporters of the ruling People’s Rally of Guinea (RPG) when he was suddenly surrounded and beaten by his assailants.

It is regrettable that in the past decade, the so-called international community appears to have made a sport of blaming Rwanda, a tiny country of less than twelve million people, for every unrest experienced in Africa’s largest country - in terms of land mass - the Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation of over 70 million inhabitants.

Residents of Apaa Village, in Pabbo Sub-county in Amuru District are demanding audience with President Museveni following escalating land wrangles between them and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). UWA has in the recent past evicted 6,000 residents from a disputed piece of land in Apaa that the Authority says belongs to East Madi Game Reserve. However, residents claim the 825 square kilometers of land is their ancestral property.

The Board of Fahamu Trust Ltd, publisher of Pambazuka News, is delighted to announce two new appointments:

1. Zo Randriamaro, former Board member and Malagasy feminist sociologist, researcher and activist, has been appointed interim Executive Director of Fahamu Trust Ltd. Zo can be reached at [email][email protected]

2. Rebecca Williams has returned to the Trust as Acting Finance Director.

We look forward to working with them to ensure Fahamu's full transition to being a pan-African organization.

The European Union is suspending new aid to Rwanda following allegations that the country is backing rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, an EU spokesman said. The decision follows a report by experts of the UN Security Council's sanctions committee alleging Rwandan support for M23 rebels, who launched an uprising in April. The DR Congo government also accuses its neighbour of involvement.

An Egyptian newspaper has launched a campaign against the obscene cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published by the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Al-Watan, a secular daily, published 13 cartoons on Monday under the slogan 'Fight cartoons with cartoons'. One shows a pair of glasses through which the burning World Trade Center is seen, with the caption: 'Western glasses for the Islamic world'. Charlie Hebdo's cartoons played on the uproar over a video which mocks Islam.

Children in the Kivu provinces of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are not only getting caught in the crossfire of the area’s ongoing violence, but also facing health risks, threats of forced recruitment by local and foreign militias, and interrupted education, say officials. 'Children are swept up in the mass population movements that are currently ongoing in eastern DRC, with entire families fleeing multiple conflicts. Our hospitals have operated on children with bullet wounds who have been caught in the crossfire. Some children present late with life-threatening malaria, malnutrition or respiratory tract infections,' Jan-Peter Stellema, operations manager at Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), told IRIN.

Uganda's broadcast regulatory body, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), has banned radios from airing a new song by renowned local artist Ssentamu Kyagulanyi (a.k.a Bobi Wine), pending investigations into claims that it is critical of the Kampala Capital City Authority's (KCCA) Executive Director, Jennifer Musisi. The song 'Tugambire ku Jennifer', translated to mean 'please talk to Jennifer on our behalf' was released earlier this month by Wine, the self-proclaimed 'Ghetto president'. The translated chorus says, 'tell Jennifer on our behalf to reduce her harshness, because the town is ours'.

After a summer of protests, government has cracked down on independent media, forcing some journalists out of work, reports Al Jazeera. At one newspaper in Khartoum, journalists said they lost their jobs when their boss got a sudden call from Sudanese intelligence telling him to close down the newspaper. Two papers have been closed in as many months, and others - even those not aligned with the opposition - are claiming harassment.

Large-scale water-related projects are a model global environmental issue. From dams controlling and rerouting water flow to providing access to clean drinking water and monitoring the nutrient quality of water resources, local, national, and international players often have to work together to manage these water resources. A new study of nearly 200 major international water-related projects over the past 20 years has identified existing and emerging challenges and how science can offer solutions. The report claims that 'insufficient and disjointed management of human demands on water and aquatic systems has led to situations where both social and ecological systems are in jeopardy and have even collapsed.'

Many world regions face 'water bankruptcy' due to mismanagement of water resources, with implications for food and energy security, experts have warned. This mismanagement of water and aquatic systems has 'led to situations where both social and ecological systems are in jeopardy and have even collapsed,' said the report, 'Science-Policy Bridges over Troubled Waters' - a study of almost 200 major international water-related projects over the past 20 years.