Cape Town Community TV together with the support of AIDC and FES have produced 'Free Media, Free Minds!' - a 13 part TV series focusing on aspects of media freedom and the free flow of information in South Africa. The show is broadcast across Cape Town and live streamed on the internet every Monday at 19h00 and broadcast again every Sunday at 16h30 from the 7th November 2011 to 5th February 2012. Visit Cape Town Community TV for the schedule.

Eleven people were left dead in Egypt as protestors against continuing military rule clashed with police in and around Tahrir Square. This informal video captures some of the scenes from Tahrir Square.

European Union carbon prices could shed some 70 per cent from current levels, as the bloc struggles with a mounting debt crisis and a glut of supply in the carbon market is unlikely to disappear until 2025, analysts at UBS said. The investment bank also said the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), the 27-nation bloc's main policy tool to fight global warming, 'isn't working' because carbon prices are 'already too low to have any significant environmental impact'.

ARTICLE 19 says the Draft Kenya Data Protection Bill 2009 currently undergoing internal review and stakeholder consultation is critically limited and calls on the Constitution Implementation Commission to revise it to be in line with acceptable international standards on the right to freedom of expression and freedom of information. Over 70 countries have now adopted data protection laws covering the collection and use of personal information. Over 50 of those countries also have freedom of information laws.

The World Bank and the African Union have taken steps to lower the cost of sending remittances to and within Africa by launching an online database that will help increase transparency about prices and stimulate greater competition among service providers. The database, Send Money Africa, is a years-in-the-making partnership between the Bank, the African Union Commission, and donors. Through its interface, migrants can compare the cost that remittance service providers charge to send a particular amount to a given country. 'Send Money Africa will stimulate competition among the service providers and ultimately induce a reduction of the costs. As a result, remittance senders and recipients will benefit from transparent, efficient, less costly remittance services,' said Richard Cambridge, Manager of the Africa Diaspora Program in the World Bank’s Africa Region.

Right to know activists were astounded when the Secrecy Bill returned to the National Assembly last week, making empty words of the ANC's promises of public consultation on the Bill. The ANC withdrew the Bill from the National Assembly agenda on 19 September, purportedly to allow the ANC to hold public consultations on the Bill. Yet the Bill was debated on Wednesday 16 November without a single public meeting having taken place. Civil society groups, however, continue to insist that the Bill presents a threat to democracy and the citizen's right to know.

All three private radio and television stations shut down by the Liberian Government have been reopened. Love FM/TV, Power FM/TV and Kings FM/TV were ordered closed by the Justice ministry on the eve of the presidential runoff election for broadcasting messages mainly by the opposition Congress for Democratic Change, which eventually boycotted the polls.

A reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions is not only the goal of environmentalists but also of pretty much every government in the world. The map available through this weblink is produced by the Guardian UK. It shows a world where established economies have large - but declining - carbon emissions. The new economic giants are growing rapidly.

Nevanji Madanhire, the editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Standard newspaper, and reporter Nqaba Matshazi, were arrested in Harare on Tuesday 15 November and charged with theft, unlawful entry and criminal defamation. It is believed the journalists were taken to the Harare Central Police station. The duo’s arrest is over a story Matshazi wrote on 6 November that claimed a new health insurance firm, Green Card Medical Society, was reportedly on the brink of collapse. The story claimed that the company’s expenditure outstripped its income.

One of Africa’s oldest radio stations, the Monrovia-based Eternal Love Winning Africa (ELWA) has been burnt by unknown arsonists, sources said. ELWA is an American-owned Christian station that was not among the four that were ordered closed by the government. Information about the burning of the station was still scanty, but its neighbours explained that it was set ablaze early Wednesday by unknown arsonists, who had not claimed responsibility for the act.

Two South Sudanese independent journalists have been imprisoned over a column critical of President Salva Kiir, according to local journalists and news reports. On 1 November South Sudan National Security Services (NSS) agents in the temporary capital of Juba arrested Peter Ngor, editor of the private daily Destiny, and ordered the indefinite suspension of his newspaper for running an 26 October opinion article by columnist Dengdit Ayok, news reports said. The article, titled 'Let Me Say So', criticised the president for allowing his daughter to marry an Ethiopian national and accused him of 'staining his patriotism', news reports said.

Egyptian military prosecutors have extended the detention of a prominent activist and blogger, pending investigations into accusations that he incited violence and attacked military personnel during deadly protests. The extension will add 15 days to Alaa Abd El Fattah's previous sentence of 15 days, which was handed down on 30 October after he refused to be interrogated by a military prosecutor.

Africa is the fastest-growing mobile market in the world, and is the biggest after Asia, an association of worldwide mobile phone operators has said. The number of subscribers on the continent has grown almost 20 per cent each year for the past five years, the GSM Association report on Africa says. It expects there will be more than 735 million subscribers by the end of 2012.

Liberian opposition radio and TV stations were shut down by the authorities on 8 November 2011 on the orders of a criminal court in Monrovia. The stations are being accused of spreading messages that the authorities said could incite violence. The stations, Kings FM belonging to the Congress for Democratic Change’s (CDC) Vice Presidential Candidate, George Weah; Love FM and TV owned by Benoni Urey, a known sympathiser of the National Patriotic Party (NPP) which has entered into an alliance with the CDC and Power FM and TV. The Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent reported that the affected stations would remain closed until their representatives appeared before the court on 10 November.

In this keynote lecture delivered at the annual conference of the Stanford Forum for African Studies in Palo Alto, California, on 29 October Pius Adesanmi explores how capitalism has organised human history and experience in the pursuit of profit. The full lecture is available here.

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has suggested the ruling party may yet heed calls from the media to write a public interest defence into the contested Protection of State Information Bill. Media organisations and civil rights groups have vowed to launch a Constitutional Court challenge to the legislation if it were passed in its present form.

Social media has gone mainstream in South Africa, with both individuals and businesses embracing the available platforms and the average age of users steadily increasing as more people become connected and networks mature. These and other findings were released in a study by Fuseware and World Wide Worx, titled South African Social Media Landscape 2011. Homegrown messaging application MXit and Facebook are the most popular choices of individual internet activity, while Twitter has seen the most growth in the past year.

Access to information from any local government should not require appeals to the Mayor and/or the courts, write Zackie Achmat and Fritz Jooste in this article about the difficulties of the Social Justice Coalition in accessing City of Cape Town service agreements with companies responsible for municipal waste disposal in impoverished townships. 'Local government secrecy is unlawful because it is dangerous to democracy; it can allow influence peddling by the wealthy and connected, and often harms the health and wellbeing of working-class and poor communities.'

This PressTV video is a news feature on the Russell Tribunal on Palestine that took place recently in Cape Town. It features interviews with Desmond Tutu and Cynthia McKinney. The tribunal is an international people's forum created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East and is a public awareness campaign.

The international organisation that governs top-level Internet domain names is taking bids on the creation of '.africa'. Supporters say it will promote African businesses better than individual country names such as ‘dot-ke’ for Kenya or 'dot-za' for South Africa. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - or ICANN - is in a period of change following the announcement six months ago that Internet domains currently dominated by dot-coms will be opened up to dot-anything. That means there could soon be a continent-wide dot-africa domain.