Two top Muslim Brotherhood officials are being investigated by Egypt’s Attorney General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud over their role in allegedly inciting President Mohamed Morsi supporters to attack female protesters around Tahrir Square. Mohamed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian are under investigation, Mahmoud said. Mahmoud himself had only the day before defied an order to step down from his position after President Morsi attempted to push him out after a court acquitted former top Hosni Mubarak officials of their role in the infamous 'Camel Battle' during the 18 days of protests that ousted his rule.

The Ethiopian government on Friday said its peace talks with the Ogaden National liberation Front (ONLF) rebel group had collapsed. The two sides started negotiations in September and further talks had been scheduled to be held in Kenya. But government representatives at the talks said the ONLF had refused to recognise the Horn of Africa country's constitution, after they demanded the rebels to adhere to Ethiopian rules.

East African Environment Ministers have ended a meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to discuss a set of radical policy proposals to deal with environmental pollution, including the introduction of a pay-as-you-pollute taxes, according to a statement from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on Saturday. The Ministers for Environment and Natural Resources from the IGAD region met to adopt the regional environment policy and strategy as well as the environmental assessment policy framework.

With newspapers forced to close, journalists banned and reporters persecuted, Sudanese media professionals say that their nation’s press is in a worse state than ever. Sudan’s press has a turbulent history, with periods of rapid development interspersed with stints of harsh official repression. But, according to media professionals, the sector is currently in a dismal state, with rampant censorship and readers who have lost faith in journalists.

Welfare Systems are rapidly evolving in Sub-Saharan Africa, with some countries having implemented systems allowing evaluation of measures taken several decades ago. Students and researchers from Cameroon have closely examined social public policies and private sector initiatives in their country, as reports Global Voices.

Ten years after the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened its doors in The Hague, the United Nations Security Council held its first open discussion on the role of the court, with some nations reiterating complaints that its docket is highly politicised and has unfairly singled out African nations for censure. The ICC is the only permanent international court with a mandate to prosecute individuals accused of the most heinous crimes – genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

An outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in Uganda has spread to the capital Kampala after an infected woman travelled to the city and the death toll from the disease, a cousin of Ebola, climbed to five, a health official said on Monday. The latest outbreak of another haemorrhagic fever, first confirmed on Friday in Kabale district, 430 km (270 miles) southwest of Kampala, has rattled a country that only two weeks ago declared itself free of Ebola after it claimed at least 16 lives.

Police authorities have admitted that they may have been at fault in the Marikana mine shooting, with some officers either overreacting or mistakenly shooting at protesters in response to 'friendly-fire'. In an opening statement to the inquiry into the deaths of 34 workers at South Africa's Marikana mine, police officials said that 'the response of some police officers may have been disproportionate to the danger they faced from the group of more than 200 armed protesters'.

Hundreds of residents of a northeastern Nigerian city were fleeing Sunday after three days of Islamist attacks that left at least 31 dead and many buildings and properties razed, witnesses said. The troubled city of Potiskum had been under security lockdown since Thursday with troops patrolling the streets and residents keeping in-doors for fear of new attacks.

A new report by the World Bank's Africa's Pulse records that citizens in some African states are enduring greater extreme poverty than they were before - citing Angola, Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon. At the same time, it says, other countries on the continent, such as Guinea, Zambia, DR Congo, Ghana and Mali, are already accounting for a significant proportion of global mineral output. The report claims that, excluding South Africa (a notable exception, since it's historically been Africa's mining 'melting pot'), sub-Saharan growth is forecast soon to rise to 6% from 4.8%.

The Dutch Parliament has voted to suspend the deportation of young asylum seekers who have been in the Netherlands longer than five years at least until a new government is formed. The vote was taken during the first parliamentary sitting since elections. Earlier this year, a bill was put forward that would grant residency to refugees under 18 who had been in the Netherlands for eight years or more. There was insufficient support for the proposal in the previous parliament, but now there would be a majority.

At least six people have been killed in a firefight after gunmen attacked an army barracks in Guinea-Bissau, military sources say. They say the army repelled the pre-dawn attack just outside the capital Bissau, killing six 'rebels'. The raid is likely to further heighten tensions in the West African nation, where the military seized power in a coup in April.

The Second Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA II) ended on Saturday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with participants urging African negotiators and researchers to step up efforts to further strengthen the role of science in the negotiations process. The two-day conference that met ahead of the Doha Climate Change Conference scheduled for December also urged developed countries to raise the level of ambition in order to set the right carbon price which would in turn encourage investment in mitigation activities.

Reporters Without Borders has said it is deeply shocked by yesterday (21 October) evening’s attempt to murder Radio Shabelle journalist Mohamed Mohamud Turyare, who was shot four times in the chest and abdomen by two gunmen as he left a Mogadishu mosque. He was rushed to the capital’s Madina Hospital, where he underwent immediate surgery. Doctors said after the operation that his injuries no longer posed a threat to his life.

On Friday 12 October, the Democratic Governance & Rights Unit (DGRU) of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Sonke Gender Justice Network, lodged a formal complaint with the office of the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) calling on the CGE to investigate the lack of gender transformation in the judiciary. Research conducted by the DGRU reveals that at the Constitutional Court only two of eleven justices are women and at the Supreme Court of Appeal only seven of 24 judges are women.

Since a spate of attacks on Côte d’Ivoire’s army and police bases in August, several civilians have been rounded up, beaten and detained for ransom, say rights groups and ex-detainees who accuse the Côte d’Ivoire Republican Forces (FRCI – also part of the army) of violation and mistreatment. In recent months, armed gangs the authorities say are suspected supporters of ousted president Laurent Gbagbo have raided military and police bases in and around the commercial capital Abidjan as well as a power station and a border post. The attack on the power station in mid-October was the first non-military target since the ambushes begun.

Sudanese rebels said they had shelled the main city in the oil-producing South Kordofan state near the border with South Sudan after coming under artillery fire from government troops, the third bout of shelling in the past two weeks. Sudan's army has been fighting SPLM-North rebels in the state since June last year, shortly before South Sudan seceded from Sudan, but the South Kordofan capital Kadugli has been mostly isolated from the fighting.

The number of Somali refugees in a series of camps in an arid, harsh area of south-eastern Ethiopia has passed the 170,000 mark, making Dollo Ado the world's second largest refugee complex. 'Dollo Ado is now the world's biggest refugee camp after Dadaab in Kenya,' UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic said, adding that although the rate of arrivals at Dollo Ado has slowed this year, people are continuing to flee conflict and insecurity in southern and central parts of Somalia. Many cite fear of harassment and forced recruitment by armed groups who control large rural areas of the country.

African member states of the United Nations have submitted a draft resolution on ending female genital mutilation (FGM) to the UN General Assembly, in what campaigners have hailed as a landmark step to end a practice that has been inflicted on up to 140 million women and girls. FGM, which is widespread in parts of Africa and pockets of the Middle East and Asia, involves the partial or total removal of the external genitals, and in many cases the closing of the vaginal opening.

Ghana's National Coalition on Mining (NCOM) held its annual forum on 3 October 2012 at New Abirim in the country's eastern region. It was attended by an estimated 600 representatives of communities, mainly in the catchment area of the mine but also across the entire length and breadth of mining areas in Ghana. The forum took place just after citizens and farmers in the Chirano mining area presented a protest note to the Minister of Lands And Natural Resources. They demanded immediate payment of delayed compensation by Canada's Kinross Gold Corp, for the destruction of their cocoa trees seven years earlier.