At least seven children have died from a suspected diarrhoea outbreak which has affected over 6,000 children in two towns in Zimbabwe over the past week, a state newspaper said. 'Seven children died in Masvingo and Kadoma last week following a diarrhoea outbreak which has seen a total of 6,472 cases being recorded in the two towns,' The Sunday Mail reported. 'The main problem has always been unclean water and poor sanitation,' the newspaper quoted Portia Manangazira, director for disease control in the health ministry, as saying.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information says it has filed a lawsuit against the military council, prime minister, and minister of information for the misinformation and incitement against the protesters by the state TV during the events at Maspero. 'A group of Egyptians organized a peaceful March on 9 October that started from some areas in Cairo, heading to the area of Maspero. Once they had arrived there, violence erupted and nobody knows who instigated it. On the other hand, the Egyptian TV deployed all its vast potentials to outrage and incite the public opinion against the peaceful protesters.'

Yes, there was a secret plot to oust President Robert Mugabe. Yes, Sir Richard Branson was one of its ringleaders. But the British billionaire has vehemently denied last week’s extraordinary claims that he once offered a £6.5 million bribe to persuade the Zimbabwean leader to stand down. The mogul told The Independent exclusively that in 2007 he orchestrated covert meetings between Jonathan Moyo, a minister in Mugabe’s government, and several respected African statesmen.

The law does not necessarily make much difference when it comes to child labour: in Guinea and Mauritania the worst forms of child labour persist despite it being banned by law, leading child protection experts to call for a better understanding of the dynamics behind it. West Africa adviser for child protection at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joachim Theis told IRIN: 'Until now there has been very little discourse which makes the links between strategies taken by parents to find a solution for each child in the context of informal employment, and the application of international norms.'

The Eugene Terre'Blanche murder trial was expected to enter its second week in the high court sitting in Ventersdorp on Monday. Last week, seven witnesses took the stand. Five of them testified that the two farmworkers accused of killing the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader had confessed to the crime. Terre'Blanche's former employees, Chris Mahlangu and a minor, are accused of beating and hacking him to death in his North West farmhouse on 3 April last year.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on the international community to give rural women the same access to productive resources as men, noting the huge benefits that would ensue. 'Despite the heavy responsibility rural women shoulder, they lack equal access to opportunities and resources,' Ban stated in a message, released ahead of the International Day of Rural Women.

Human rights activists have launched a project expected to provide free legal assistance to inmates on death row. The development will also see the mitigation of the inmates’ sentences in the High Court. The project is part of an ongoing advocacy to scrap the death penalty in the country. Under the project, planned initially to benefit at least 15 death row inmates, human rights activists will also lobby for law reforms and conduct public education for various stakeholders as well as dissemination of sentencing guidelines.

The main aim of this Timberline report is to question the claims made by Green Resources Ltd (GRL) in pursuit of CDM registration for its Idete project, as well as to expose and highlight the
problematic nature of market-based climate change mitigation projects. Findings from studies on tree plantation afflicted areas in other countries were used for comparison and to inform the Tanzanian study so as to identify common issues and trends and therefore help establish the likely impacts of similar tree plantations in Tanzania.

Is ‘citizen action’ anything other than the struggle of people to right what they perceive as wrongs and limit the power of the cruel and the unjust? Participants at a conference in the Hague, organised by Hivos, under the title 'The Changing Face of Citizen Action: A Knowledge Exploration' noted the common assumption in the room that 'citizen action' would inevitably lead to more advancement of values the room shared - more democracy, more social justice, more respect for universal rights. But in some parts of the world, 'citizen action' is mobilising fiercely against abortion, against LGBT rights, against other sects and ethnicities.

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...

Rapid urbanisation is being portrayed – by the UN, the World Bank and many others – as a potential developmental 'silver bullet' for Africa. Cities, we are frequently told, will be the drivers of economic growth and poverty reduction on the continent in the years to come. But larger concentrations of people are not automatically generating benefits – quite the opposite, says this article. 'The social, economic and political consequences of policymakers continuing to ignore the best available demographic research could be grim. For example, appropriate food supply networks and health services require sound knowledge of population distribution and migration patterns.'

Mawingu internally displaced persons stormed out of the camp on Monday protesting government’s failure to purchase land for them. Led by their chairman Peter Kariuki and other officials, they regretted that the government had failed to respond to their request to have them resettled on a 6,000 acre piece of land that they had identified at Wiyumuririe in Laikipia.

The Pan-African Parliament, in a recommendation on land investments, has called for a moratorium on new large-scale land acquisitions, pending implementation of land policies and guidelines on good land governance. PAP has also called for the establishment of an African Ministerial Conference on land-based investments equivalent to the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCE) and the African Ministerial Council on Water (AMCOW).

The Spine Africa Project focuses on three objectives: the treatment of those afflicted with spinal conditions, the education of local medical personnel, and social change. Each of these three factors contributes individually to what seems to be an exclusively medical epidemic. Visit their website for more information.

The effects of changes in technology - particularly in communications technology - on displaced people and those who work with them are unevenly understood and appreciated. The 32 articles and short pieces in the feature theme section of this FMR look at some of these changes and their implications. This issue also includes a selection of general articles on migrant deaths at sea, fleeing from Cairo, language training for refugees in the Czech Republic, refugees after the Japanese earthquake, a strategy for urban areas, partner violence, transitional justice in Kenya, and local integration.

The UN’s growing concern over Ethiopia’s construction of the controversial Gibe III dam has prompted it to demand urgent information from the African state. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has given Ethiopia until the end of January 2012 to provide reliable evidence that independent assessments have been carried out, and that tribal people in the region have been properly consulted.

Africa's debt repayments to the International Monitory Fund, World Bank and other multilateral lending institutions have choked social spending on the continent, a recent report reveals. With a combined debt standing at US$350 billion, this means whatever money comes in by way of 'aid' and 'assistance' from donor countries and institutions is meaningless and merely meant to ensure government's function sufficiently to pay off annual dues to lenders. Africa spends more than US$15b annually on servicing its debts. The report by the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) is titled 'African Debt Crisis - A Humanitarian Perspective'.

According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index, almost 80 per cent of households in this Central African nation now live on less than two dollars a day. Child poverty is estimated to be even higher, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with eight out of 10 children not having access to basic services, such as education, health, nutrition or safe drinking water. 'The situation of Congolese children is worrisome. Only about a third of children of primary school age attend primary school,' says UNICEF DRC monitoring and evaluation specialist Bertin Gbayoro.

The desire to have a strong economy and employment may decide who will be Kenya’s next president, according to an opinion poll by Infotrak. The poll indicated that 86 per cent of Kenyans want to participate in the 2012 polls because they yearn for change. At the same time, half of Kenyans would like the General Election in August, while 37 per cent prefer December 2012.

The chairperson of the Coalition of Ivorian female leaders (CFELCI), Mrs Mariam Dao-Gabala, has launched a sensitisation campaign for the mass participation of women in the country's parliamentary elections, scheduled for 11 December. Entitled 'Why not female MPs?' the campaign aims at mobilising women to break from the past and participate massively in the elections.