A new United Nations report shows for the first time how poor health is linked to poverty in cities and calls on policymakers to identify those that need the most help and target measures to improve their well-being. The report, entitled 'Hidden Cities: unmasking and overcoming health inequities in urban settings', was launched in Kobe, Japan, where leaders from governments, academia, media and non-governmental organisations have been meeting for the past three days to examine how to improve the health of city dwellers.

Conditions were ripe for cholera because international policy towards Haiti hasn't changed in decades, says this opinion piece in the London Guardian. 'Economic exploitation, political intervention, NGO gifts with chains attached, media misrepresentation, the same mistakes have been made over and over again. Sadly, even an earthquake doesn't seem to have changed that. It's little wonder Haitians are manifesting their anger in increasingly heated protests.'

A new study finds a lack of transparency and corruption are reducing the impact of an initiative in Cameroon that channels a portion of national timber levies to rural forest communities. The study highlights the challenges of using a climate change pact to do something similar in forested regions around the world. In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal International Forestry Review, scientists at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) examined how revenues from a tax paid by logging companies in Cameroon, known as an Area Fee (AF), are distributed to local councils to reduce rural poverty and stimulate local economic growth.

The International Federation of Journalists ( IFJ) has condemned the arrest and detention by police in Zimbabwe of Dumisani Sibanda, the President of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists. The IFJ has called for his immediate release and says the action is the latest in a series of hostile incidents that are putting the country’s journalists increasingly at risk. Sibanda, Bulawayo Bureau chief of The Standard, is being questioned over a story involving the police force.

Routledge African Studies has announced free downloads of the top five downloaded articles from each of their African Studies journals. Articles include:
- African diaspora and the metropolis: an introduction by Fassil Demissie
- An epidemic waiting to happen? The spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa in social and historical perspective by Shula Marks
- A nation to be reckoned with: The politics of World Cup stadium construction in Cape Town and Durban, South Africa by Peter Alegi.

Global food import bills may pass the $1 trillion mark in 2010, a level not seen since food prices peaked in 2008, says a new United Nations report, which warns that harder times could be ahead without a major increase in food production next year. According to the latest edition of the Food Outlook report, released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food import bills for the world's poorest countries are predicted to rise 11 per cent in 2010 and by 20 per cent for low-income food-deficit countries.

Kabiné Komara

Zaya Yeebo

Egypt's ruling party has rejected as 'interference' calls, including by Washington, to allow foreign observers to monitor this month's parliamentary elections, media reports said on Wednesday. The National Democratic Party's secretary general Sawfat al-Sharif said only local groups would be allowed to observe the November 28 poll.

Human rights defenders can apply for the Front Line Fellowship Program, which offers them an opportunity to take some time out from their normal work. Front Line, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders founded in Dublin in 2001 aims to protect human rights defenders at risk. It offers its fellowships to help human rights defenders not only take some time off their work but also work on a project to build their capacities further and contribute to the protection of human rights defenders internationally.

Nawal el Saadawi is a popular speaker and writer in the UK. For the first time ever she will be facilitating a course on her specialised area, creativity and dissidence. Places are limited and will be offered on a first come first served basis.

The United Nations estimates that 95 per cent of aggressive behaviour, harassment, abusive language and denigrating images in online spaces are aimed at women and come from partners or former male partners. Other surveys show that the victims of cyber-stalking are predominantly female. APC Women and Inter Press Service Africa co-hosted a media roundtable on 17 November entitled ‘Click Against Violence: Taking 16 Days of Activism Online’, to discuss online Gender Based Violence and resources available to cover the issue.

Marilio Wane

Thousands of women and men, people affected by the destruction of the environment, farmers, landless, Indigenous Peoples and activists from all sectors of society will gather in Cancun to propose thousands of solutions to confront climate change. They will show the world leaders their opposition to the false solutions to climate chaos discussed by the UNFCCC, such as market-based proposals on carbon trading and REDD, agrofuels and geo-engineering.

Join New Tactics in Human Rights for an online 'Tactical Dialogue on Participatory Research for Action' from November 17 - 23 2010. Participatory action research is research which involves all relevant parties in actively examining together current action (which they experience as problematic) in order to change and improve it. Participatory research can create credible and critical documentation at the grassroots level. Not only can the information be utilised in advocacy and lobbying efforts, the research process itself can serve to create a network of activists, informing organisations working on issues that impact study participants, and directly benefiting the people themselves. This dialogue will be a space to share resources, challenges, approaches and ideas for using participatory research for social change.

Patients are at risk of developing resistance to Tuberculosis medicine due to lack of access to quality treatment, according to a report presented at the 41st Union World Conference on Lung Health. TB patients should ideally receive a six months fixed dose combination regimen at the cost of around US$26 per patient but in some countries this is not the case according to 'Falling Short: Ensuring Access to Simple, Safe and Effective First-Line Medicines for Tuberculosis'.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers.

The College of Arts and Social Science is pleased to announce to all university students a new course onPan African Thought. The course begins this semester, i.e. November 2010.

Renowned radical economist Samir Amin, director of the Third World Forum, chair of the World Forum for Alternatives and one of the best-known thinkers of his generation, visits the UK at the end of the month.

Amin will be speaking at Oxford (29 November), Liverpool (30 November), Edinburgh (1 December) and London (2 December).

For more information, please visit the .

The Security Council has urged parties to the 2005 peace pact that ended the country’s long-running civil war to take urgent action to ensure the holding of peaceful and credible referenda on self-determination in less than two months’ time. Sudanese are slated to vote on 9 January on whether the south should secede from the rest of the country and also to determine the final status of Abyei, an oil-rich area in the centre of the country, as set out in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

On 13 November, independent reporter and filmmaker Nicolas Rossier, conducted an exclusive two-hour interview with former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the hills of Johannesburg. He spoke with the former president about his life in forced exile, Haiti’s current political situation, and his possible return to Haiti. This is an excerpt of the interview. The interview was re-posted to the website of the Canada Haiti Action Network, with permission of Nicolas Rossier.