Gunmen have killed six people and abducted three others in the latest attack in the north-eastern border region with Somalia, police say. A local police chief told the BBC that Somali militants were to blame for the raid in Wajir district, in which two local officials were seized. There have been several attacks since Nairobi sent troops into Somalia to fight the al-Shabab Islamist group. No-one has claimed responsibility for the latest attack.

The Tunisian revolution was, famously, initiated by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man in a provincial town who set himself alight in front of the town hall in protest at petty corruption and his inability to make a living. In the six months immediately after Bouazizi's death (he took two weeks to die from his injuries) at least 107 fellow Tunisians tried to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire, according to statistics reported by the BBC.

Joint Statement by CSAAWU, Democratic Left Front, Mawubuye Land Rights Forum and the Trust for Community Outreach and Education.

A hundred former Mauritanian refugees, repatriated from Senegal, have staged a protest outside the National Assembly, demanding that their agricultural land, confiscated after their expulsion in 1989, be returned to them, PANA reports. They are also asking that their documentation be completed in accordance with the government regulations, Makasi Diakhite, himself a former refugee, said.

Six major global companies have been shortlisted by a comittee of experts from Berne Declaration and Greenpeace Switzerland for the 2012 Public Eye on Davos-award