Save the Children Swaziland condemned teachers for beating all the children at a school after one pupil made a noise in assembly. It said the school violated their human rights. The mass caning happened at Lusoti Primary School. Parents have now asked the Ministry of Education and Training to investigate.

Scientists have shown that the cholera pathogen came to Haiti with foreign UN troops who carried the bacteria in their bodies, and whose military base was dumping its sewage into a nearby river. The imported disease has claimed more than 7,000 lives and continues to ravage communities across Haiti. Read more about the this issue on the website.

South African social justice organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi have released their first e-newsletter. Visit the website through the URL provided to subscribe.

The sentencing of a young Sudanese woman to death by stoning for adultery presents numerous grave violations of domestic and international law, Human Rights Watch said. The sentence also underscores the urgent need for Sudan to reform its legal system in accordance with its human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said. Intisar Sharif Abdallah, whose age has not been determined but is believed to be under the age of 18, was sentenced by a judge on 22 April 2012, in the city of Omdurman, near Khartoum. Since her sentencing, she been held in Omdurman prison with her five-month-old baby, with her legs shackled.

The Second Istanbul Conference on Somalia, under the theme 'Preparing Somalia's Future: Goals for 2015', took place on 31st May and 1st June 2012. Maintaining the multi-dimensional and multi-layered approach of the first Istanbul Conference in 2010 onSomalia, it was attended by high level representatives from 57 countries and 11 international and regional organizations, as well as by the TFG leadership, the regional administrations, and representatives from wide-ranging segments of Somali society, including youth, women, business community, elders, religious leaders and the Diaspora.

The department of basic education faces court action over its failure to fully fill the tens of thousands of teaching posts the Eastern Cape needs. The basic education department is being dragged before court again, this time over the embattled Eastern Cape education department’s failure to fully fill 64,752 posts for 2012 and wholly fill the 64,752 teaching posts it budgeted for in the province.

Unions have given the government 24 hours to agree to terms to avoid a wage dispute that would throw the public service sector into disarray. Public sector unions have united in rejecting the government’s wage offer, which – as it is now – would see salaries in these sectors increase by 6.5 per cent and the housing allowance by R100. Unions are demanding an 8 per cent wage increment and R1,500 housing allowance, while the state is offering R900 for a housing allowance, an increase from the current R800. This adjustment would be effective for six months only.

We invite you to join us in Monastir from the 12th to the 17th of July where we will launch together the process towards the World Social Forum 2013.

Farm invasions are 'inevitable' should white South Africans not voluntarily hand over land to the government, says the ANC Youth League. “If they don’t want to see angry black youths flooding their farms they must come to the party. Whites must volunteer some of the land and mines they own.' Lamola was speaking at the end of a youth league policy workshop held in preparation for the ANC policy conference later this month.

The withdrawal of Dominion Uganda Ltd from exploration around Lake Edward - an area which, according to independent petroleum geologists, may hold between 90 million and 1.1 billion barrels of oil - leaves a plethora of unanswered questions swirling around an industry that, in Uganda, remains no more transparent than a dollop of waxy crude. Why did Dominion pull out? What happened to a ‘Letter of Intent’ its parent company, UK-based Ophir Energy, signed in March 2012 with Canadian wildcatter, Octant Energy Corp., giving Octant an 80 per cent share in, and operatorship of, Exploration Area 4B? Did the government of Uganda approve these deals? And where does this leave the mysterious Alpha Oil - a Ugandan owned company that, in one of the sector’s best kept secrets, for many years held a five per cent stake in Exploration Area 4B?

Egyptians continue their million-man march in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez to voice their anger at the lenient sentence handed to ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. The protesters gathered in the capital's iconic Liberation Square and other cities to urge the retrial of Mubarak and his two sons, demanding the death penalty for the octogenarian dictator. The demonstrators also called for unity among all political parties to prevent the re-emergence of the Mubarak-era dictatorship.

An Egypt court acquitted 13 police officers who were accused of killing six people and injuring 18 others on January 28 and 29, 2011, during the uprising that ousted the former regime, outside a police station in Giza. The six men were killed in what was known as the Friday of Anger that saw hundreds of others die at the hands of the police, who tried to suppress the uprising. The police officers defense accused the families of the dead of trying to prosecute the officers 'out of greed' as they were accused of aiming for state compensation.

New genetically altered corn aimed at helping farmers deal with drought offers more hype than help over the long term, according to a report issued by a science and environmental advocacy group. The Union for Concerned Scientists (UCS) said the only genetically altered corn approved by regulators and undergoing field trials in the United States has no improved water efficiency, and provides only modest results in only moderate drought conditions.

This post from the blog Africa is a Country reflects on the film Safe House, starring Denzil Washington, which was filmed in Cape Town. Washington had previously been quoted as saying he felt more comfortable making the film in a 'black' country, but as Loren A Lynch points out, the film perpetuates Hollywood stereotypes. 'The majority of audiences rarely see past guise of set dressing into the political and racial implications of not only the film but also of the film industry itself. Western audiences remain content with Hollywood’s constructed perceptions of both countries and cultures outside of their own, when in reality the differences stick out almost as much as Denzel Washington in a “brown” country.'

The TaxCast from the Tax Justice Network is a 15 minute podcast that follows the latest news relating to tax evasion, tax avoidance and the shadow banking system. In the latest podcast, tax haven insiders speak out, the co-founder of Facebook ‘unfriends’ the US, and Europe considers a Financial Transaction Tax.

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, will take place in Rio de Janeiro from June 20 to 22, twenty years after the celebration of the 'Earth Summit' in the very same city. There are several topics in the agenda resulting from intense negotiations that are still underway. In this respect, the World Forum of Civil Society Networks - UBUNTU - has issued a statement calling for mobilization at all levels in order to ensure that this new 'Earth Summit' measures up to the serious occasion we are going through. 'The world cannot afford another fiasco in Rio. It is time for responsibility. And, above all, it is time for action.'

If the life sentences for former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and one of his key allies were meant to placate Egyptians, they have had the opposite effect. Shortly after the verdict, tens of thousands of Egyptians from across the politcal spectrum, with perhaps the exception of die-hard Mubarak supporters and supporters of presidential candidate and former Mubarak cabinet member Ahmed Shafik, filled the streets of Egyptian cities to voice their anger at the verdicts. Northern cairo criminal court Judge Ahmed Refaat convicted Mubarak and Habib Al-Adly, the former head of Egypt’s interior ministry (MOI) merely of 'failing to stop the killings.' Many Egyptians believe Mubarak and Al-Adly together with the state’s security services, were responsible for the killing of hundreds of protestors and the torture and detention of thousands more political detainees.

Activists, supporters and officials of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), made the majority of indecent expressions recorded by a Media Foundation for West Africa study during weeks seven and eight monitoring of language use on radio. Twenty one (21) out of the total of 28 indecent expressions recorded were made by NDC officials and supporters.

Contrary to widespread expectations and public pronouncements, the Ugandan government has pulled the plug on controversial legislation which since 2000 has granted blanket amnesty to more than 26,000 members of armed groups, most notably the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The Act was passed as part of efforts to end hostilities in northern Uganda and bring the LRA to the negotiating table. Over the following six years, several detailed accords were drawn up but LRA leader Joseph Kony repeatedly refused to sign a comprehensive peace agreement. 'There will be no blanket amnesty for anyone now,' said Internal Affairs Minister Hilary Onek, who on 25 May used his prerogative to allow significant sections of the Amnesty Act to lapse.

Turkey has adopted a new course in foreign policy toward Africa under the impact of a new geographic imagination, states this article. 'The novel geographic imagination of Turkish policy-makers has been strongly influenced by Turkey's recent domestic political transformation and, to a lesser extent, by changes in regional and international politics.'