Atizar Mendes Pereira, journalist and director of Última Hora, a privately-owned Bissau-based newspaper was on March 11, 2008 arrested and detained by the Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Interior of Guinea Bissau. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that Pereira was interrogated for nearly six hours, before being released.

According to the government’s current estimates, donors will need to provide 20,000 tonnes of food aid to compensate for expected production shortfalls in 2008. Aid experts in Bissau, however, said that if the government had better policies, and if the rains came at the right time, the country should be able to feed itself with current levels of international assistance.

Guinea-Bissau has joined the poor countries that enjoy the debt relief benefit after the Paris Club creditors has agreed to immediately cancel US $180 million of the country's debt, the club announced. As of 1st January 2008, Bissau's stock of debt owed to Paris Club creditors was estimated to be US $830 million.

Saico Djau is a very frustrated laboratory technician and HIV counsellor. After testing people for HIV and informing them of their status there is nothing else he can do for them if they are HIV-positive, because there is no antiretroviral (ARV) treatment available on Guinea Bissau's Bijagos Islands. He has to give them the bad news and then send them back to their villages.

The government and the army in Guinea Bissau are implicated in drug trafficking according to the latest report on Guinea Bissau by the UN Secretary-General. “Drug trafficking threatens to subvert the nascent democratisation process of Guinea-Bissau, entrench organised crime and undermine respect for the rule of law,” the report, issued on 28 September, concluded.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the government of Guinea-Bissau to help end the intimidation of journalists covering the trafficking of drugs in the country and to ensure appropriate compensation is paid to the journalists who were victims of a road accident in 2005, following a recent court ruling. "We are very worried for the security of our colleagues in Guinea-Bissau," said Gabriel Baglo, Director of IFJ Africa office.

In Guinea-Bissau, which lately has experienced very few attacks on press freedom, a special unit of the police prevented a journalist from taking photographs of a police operation and seized the journalist's camera. The press fear tougher times may come. A group of policemen who are members of the "Ninjas", a special unit of the Guinea-Bissau police earlier this month prevented Helmazin Cunha, a journalist working with the 'Nô Pintcha' pro-government newspaper from taking photographs of an operation they undertook to clear hawkers off the street

China has granted Guinea Bissau a donation of US$4 million, as part of a protocol for financial support signed Thursday in Bissau between the two countries. The funding is to help the Guinean government to overcome its budgetary difficulties, which have made it impossible to pay the salaries of public workers, with the protocol having been by the Guinean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maria da Conceição Nobre Cabral, and by China’s ambassador in Bissau, Yan Ban Ghua.

Prime Minister of Guinea-Bissau, Aristides Gomes, did what most African leaders should give a try - to tender his resignation, especially at a time when his country is hooked up in political, administrative or economic crisis.

A coalition of Guinea-Bissau's three leading political parties suspended demonstrations planned for the weekend after President João Bernardo 'Nino' Vieira undertook consultations with political leaders.

The United Nations secretary-general’s representative in Guinea-Bissau, Shola Omoregie, has negotiated an end to a 17-day crisis involving the government and prominent politician Carlos Gomes Junior who had sought refuge in the UN building in Bissau. Gomes Junior, chairman of the former ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, previously served as prime minister.

Less than a week after a previous head of Guinea-Bissau’s navy was assassinated, a former prime minister has taken refuge at the United Nations compound in the capital, Bissau, after the government issued a warrant for his arrest.

A surge in cases of watery diarrhoea has raised concerns of an impending cholera outbreak in the crumbling capital Bissau. The Health Ministry has ordered the closure of all traditional wells in the capital and urged the suspension of traditional ceremonies in an effort to prevent large gatherings that might facilitate the spread of disease.

The regional economic group ECOWAS has promised to finance the payment of three months of unpaid teachers, doctors and other government worker salaries after unions called a national strike. The main worker’s union, the Bissau National Worker’s Union (UNTG), called a three day strike on Tuesday and vowed to keep pressure on the government until workers’ wages were paid.

“Cashew nuts are very important! They enable us to eat and earn cash to buy other things,” said Bide Man, a farmer in northern Guinea Bissau. “We farm many things, but nothing helps us like the cashew”. Farmers have even stopped growing the national staple food, rice, in favour of the mighty cashew and now the country doesn’t grow enough rice to feed itself.

When Guinea Bissau troops launched a six-week offensive in mid-March to oust rebels from villages along the country’s northern border with Senegal, Jaura, like many others, lost everything. “This is what’s left of my house,” said Jaura, sweeping his arm to take in the patch of rubble that used to be his mud-brick home in the trading and farming town of Sao Domingos, 126 km north of the capital Bissau.

Refugees from Casamance living in Guinea-Bissau villages along the border with Senegal have suffered a great loss after soldiers of the Guinea-Bissau completely burnt their dwellings, reliable sources told PANA. The Guinea-Bissau soldiers had suspected the refugees to be conniving with rebels of the Movement of Casamance Democratic Forces (MFDC), loyal to Salif Sadio against whom the Bissau soldiers have been fighting during the past two weeks, according to the sources, some of which were contacted in Sao-Domingos.

The trade union movement in Guinea-Bissau is having a tough time. The unions are apparently being subjected to systematic harassment. The ICFTU was concerned to learn of the repressive measures by the management of the national Water and Electricity Company (Electricidades e Águas, EAGB) against the leaders of the local trade union at the company. According to the União Nacional dos Trabalhadores da Guiné (UNTG), the ICFTU's affiliated organisation of which the EAGB is a member, the company's management suspended all the leaders of the local union following a legal strike called by the UNTG from 7 to 9 February. A statement by the UNTG to the Attorney-General, Dr. Octavio Alves, stresses the illegal and arbitrary nature of that decision.

Guinea-Bissau’s government has declared that the worst of the cholera epidemic, which ravaged the country in the second half of this year, is over - for now. “The cholera threat in our country is passing but we have to remain vigilant if we want to avoid a resurgence in Guinea-Bissau,” said Public Health Minister Antonia Mendes Teixeira, at the country’s biggest hospital on Tuesday.

Guinea-Bissau's President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira appointed a long-time ally as prime minister on November 3, days after sacking the government of his political arch rival Carlos Gomes Junior. Aristides Gomes, the mastermind behind the campaign that propelled Vieira to the presidency in July, was swiftly sworn into office and promised to mend political fences and the West African nation's ailing economy. "I will form a government of national consensus that reflects all the country's political forces," Gomes told reporters after the ceremony.