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 .

Maghreb youths should play a key role in developing new technologies in the region, according to participants in a Hammamet forum that wrapped up on 12 November. The three-day event, dubbed 'ICT4 ALL Forum Tunis+5', brought together more than 700 managers from ICT companies and representatives of international organisations. The conference spotlighted ways to create job opportunities for the younger generation through modern communication and information technologies.

The November issue of IDRC's Lasting Impacts, 'Sustainable Agriculture' has just been published. It contains articles on:
- More food, higher incomes in the Andes
- Planting trees brings prosperity, opportunity to farmers, women in Nagaland
- Replanting hope in Africa’s highlands
- Sustainable agriculture key to solving land disputes in Lebanon
Click on the URL provided to read the November issue.

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.

Insecurity and logistical difficulties have prompted the United Nations refugee agency to relocate some 3,500 Sudanese refugees from a camp in north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR) to safer areas in the south-central part of the country. Some 500 people have been moved so far in the airlift carried out by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the CAR Government, which began last week and is expected to take about one month.

Join Arab scholars, leaders, and activists and