On 15 July 2012, the Swazi Observer issued letters of suspension to its editor, Thulani Thwala, its weekend editor, Alec Lushaba, and the newspaper's chief financial officer (CFO) and senior manager, Mr. Nala Nkabindze. No explanation was given for the suspension. Both editors have been suspended for one month and await the outcome of an investigation into the matter. National Director of the Swaziland Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA Swaziland), Comfort Mabuza, has condemned this development, branding it a clandestine action to silence the editors and prevent them from the informative and critical reporting that they are known to facilitate in Swaziland.

Reporters Without Borders has voiced its support for the one-day strike planned by Mali’s media, when radio stations will suspend broadcasting and no newspapers will be printed. In a show of solidarity, the organization issues a call for an end to the constant media freedom violations of the past four months.

The website features a photo essay by Phumeza Mlungwana that shows the effects of winter flooding on RR and TR sections in Khayelitsha, Cape Town.

Armed, masked assailants abducted and beat a veteran journalist in Mali on Thursday, leaving him with a broken hand and other injuries, according to news reports and local journalists. Eight gunmen stormed the offices of L'Indépendant newspaper in the capital, Bamako, at about 9pm, firing in the air to disperse staff and bystanders, and then seizing publisher Saouti Labass Haïdara and taking him away in a 4-by-4 vehicle, news reports said. Haïdara, dumped by a roadside four hours later, was treated at a hospital in Bamako, local journalists said.

A prominent Ethiopian journalist and blogger has been sentenced to 18 years in jail for violating the country's anti-terrorism legislation. Eskinder Nega and 23 others were found guilty last month. They were accused of links with US-based opposition group Ginbot Seven, which Ethiopia considers a terrorist organisation. Opposition activist Andualem Arage was given a life sentence by the court in the capital, Addis Ababa.

The July edition of the Art for Humanity newsletter is available. The edition includes news on 'Dialogue Among Civilizations', 'Artwork by Amodou Kane-Sy and Poem by Marouba Fall', 'Youth Day 2012' and 'Art and Social Justice Workshops'. Click .

In 2010, Google announced the availability of driving directions on Google Maps in many African countries. The internet giant has now launched walking directions for 44 African countries.

Unknown to much of the outside world, the Sudanese authorities have been very brutal while suppressing the protests that have swept the country in reaction to the high cost of living and growing opposition to the Al-Bashir dictatorship.

Reporters Without Borders has unreservedly condemned the abduction and continuing detention of Libyan cameraman Abdelqader Fosouk and Youssuf Badi in Bani Walid (150 km southeast of Tripoli), one of the last pro-Gaddafi strongholds to fall to the rebels during last year’s war. They have been held since 7 July, the day of nationwide parliamentary elections which they had gone to cover in Bani Walid for Tobacts TV, a station based in Misrata, 100 km north of Bani Walid.

Police in Swaziland have shot dead a number of suspects recently in what appears to be a “Shoot-to-Kill” policy.

For Egypt, the potentially catastrophic implications of a eurozone collapse points to the urgency of breaking with the Mubarak-era economic policies in a substantive and genuine manner.

Prof Tazoacha Asonganyi, Secretary General of the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) from 1994-2005, speaks to writer Kangsen Feka Wakai about the politics of Cameroon.

"It is essential that the ICC undertakes adequate and swift outreach to victims and affected communities to explain the sentence and what the next steps are, including reparation proceedings."

The New York-based press freedom body, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has said that two unidentified gunmen shot a Somali journalist, Abdulkadir Omar Abdulle, PANA reports. The CPJ said in a communique that Abdulkadir, who works for Universal TV as a reporter and anchor, was shot on Saturday evening near his home in the southern Wadajir district of the capital, Mogadishu, but he survived the attack.

Investigative journalist John Allan Namu, has fled Kenya after exposing a secret military squad which offers protection to Rwandan genocide fugitive, Felicien Kabuga, who is wanted in connection with the country’s brutal genocide. In the first of its kind investigation ever carried out on the trail of the Rwandan genocide suspect, NTV, a private Kenyan television network, revealed a network operating within the Kenyan military that appeared to offer round the clock protection to Kabuga.

Well-known blogger Usamah Mohamed, known on Twitter as @simsimt, was detained by the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) during protests in Sudan, and continues to be held in custody. Mohamed has been a long-time critic of Sudan’s government. His arrest came after he posted a video on why he would join the mass protests for Al-Jazeera’s The Stream.

Media watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has condemned an attack on a Togolese journalist who was covering a demonstration in the West Afrian state and called on authorities to immediately investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice. Atayi Ayi, a reporter for the daily Forum de la Semaine, was taking photographs of a protest in Lomé, the capital, when two groups of unidentified demonstrators beat him and seized his camera, CPJ said in a statement.

Seventy-five US family farmers, seed businesses and agricultural organizations representing more than 300,000 individuals and 4,500 farms filed a brief on July 5 with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. asking the appellate court to reverse a lower court’s decision from February dismissing their protective legal action against agricultural giant Monsanto’s patents on genetically engineered seed. The plaintiffs brought the preemptive case against Monsanto in March 2011 in the Southern District of New York and specifically seek to defend themselves from nearly two dozen of Monsanto’s most aggressively asserted patents on genetically modified organism (GMO) seed. They were forced to act preemptively to protect themselves from Monsanto’s abusive lawsuits, fearing that if GMO seed contaminated their property despite their efforts to prevent such contamination, Monsanto would sue them for patent infringement.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is calling for proposals for its new Multinational Working Group (GMT) on the theme of "Africa in the Information Society Era". The MWG is an important CODESRIA program aimed at promoting multinational and multidisciplinary reflections on issues affecting the African community of social science researchers. Each MWG will be led by two or three coordinators and will include a maximum of fifteen researchers. Two to three senior researchers will be selected as independent assessors and will also be resource persons during meetings of each Group. The average length of a MWG is two years during which all phases of the research process should be completed and final results prepared for publication in the CODESRIA Book Series.

A free text messaging service called EcoChat has become popular with Zimbabweans living in South Africa, according to Econet. The service is free during 2012, and forms part of the Econet ‘Call Home’ SIM card. Similar to popular messenger service What’s App, subscribers only pay standard data rates, which works out to be the fraction of the cost of an SMS.