The TAC and SECTION27 have sent an open letter to the High Commissioner to India for South Africa to highlight their urgent concerns with final negotiations for the EU-India Free Trade Agreement. They are concerned about provisions for the scale up of intellectual property, pushed by the European Union, in an impending EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the impact of these provisions on the health of people across the developing world.

Australian and Brazilian mining giants are moving villagers to land insufficient for farming and far from jobs to make way for coal projects in central Mozambique, and then sidelining local entrepreneurs as they exploit the region's natural resources, according to a new report. The independent Southern Africa Resource Watch, which monitors the impact of mining across the region, sent researchers to study resettlement efforts by Rio Tinto of Australia and Vale of Brazil, which recently began mining in Mozambique's Tete province. Southern Africa Resource Watch said 'the impact of both companies' investment on local communities remains problematic and there is no guarantee that these massive coal extraction projects are going to genuinely benefit the people of Mozambique.'

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...

More than a billion people in the world still lack access to electricity, while another one billion have unreliable access stalling efforts for improving health, livelihoods and conserve the environment. Findings from a new research published by the Worldwatch Institute (WI) urge governments and development organisations to invest in electrification to achieve critical health, environmental, and livelihood outcomes, a statement released by the Institute said.

The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights has released an independent statement in response to the crisis facing the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. It states: 'The November 2011 announcement of the cancellation of the 11th round of funding of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria because of the Fund’s financial difficulties presents the international community with both a health and a human rights crisis. Since its first round of funding in 2002, the Global Fund has played an indispensable role in advancing the health and human rights goals of the global HIV response. The Global Fund’s financial difficulties are part of a broader global HIV funding crisis.'

IMF held up Tunisia under Ben Ali as a model, yet ordinary people fed up with his excesses overthrew the regime. Now IMF appears to be courting the new leadership.

Meet the Davos Man in this article and hear about the same old song being played at the recent World Economic Forum. With global retrenchments and a Eurozone in crisis, was system change a subject for debate. '...the system, as we know by now, is one designed so very carefully for the benefit of the 1 per cent. So things like, for example, prosecuting financial fraud, redesigning incentives for corporate predation, and, well, reining in a capitalist system that is sucking the world's real economy dry, are just not on the table.'

In December, Pambazuka News carried that had exposed labour abuses in Chinese state-owned copper mines in Zambia. Here, Human Rights Watch responds to that critique.

Angola's state-controlled oil company Sonangol - the largest single shareholder in Portugal's Millennium bcp - wants the bank to gain global scale in a restructuring that involves a management shakeup, Expresso weekly said. The lender - Portugal's largest by assets - is hampered at home by the country's debt crisis and deep austerity imposed by a 78-billion-euro bailout. It needs to find fresh capital in the next few months to comply with new European rules, with cash from rapidly-growing Angola seen as one possible solution.

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...

Even as the Occupy movement recedes in size, if not in activism, in the global North, it has, to its own surprise, opened up a new front in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria - where tens of thousands have occupied and paralysed the economy in a protest against the lifting of oil subsidies. The Arab Spring is moving south, thanks to #OccupyNigeria. If nothing else, this movement dramatises the global nature of the new wave of Occupy protests.

Corporate Watch has announced the publication of a clear and concise, 24-page 'Nuts & Bolts' Guide to the ins and outs of the financial sector. From hedge funds to the money markets and derivatives, all of the major players and products are broken down from a critical perspective.

Who are the global 1%? What companies do they run? How do they escape accountability? Check out the Transnational Institute's powerful infographic displays that expose the social and environmental costs of global corporate power. TNI, as part of its new Corporate Power project, is producing a series of infographics over 2012 that expose the reality of corporate power, and our need to fundamentally change direction. Download and share these infographics, and watch out for new ones over the coming months.

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta distributed close to Sh50 million to mobilise and arm attackers during the post-election violence, according to the ruling of ICC judges. The money was released in instalments through three former MPs from Kiambu and Nakuru counties and former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga. In the ruling delivered on Monday 23 January, the judges pieced together events leading to the revenge attacks on ODM supporters in Naivasha and Nakuru by Mungiki members, who were said to be supporters of the rival Party of National Unity (PNU).

China and Japan have taken a decisive step to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar. African peoples have a lot of lessons to learn from both the capitalist crisis in Europe and this new financial arrangement.

There are at least a million people in the West who live off the aid industry. They have a vested interest in perpetuating it. But it will disintegrate over time and die slowly.

Angola's state-owned oil company Sonangol EP and some of the African country's banks are interested in stakes in Portuguese companies, Angolan Economy Minister Abraao Gourgel said. Angolan companies and investors have been increasing their stakes in companies in Portugal, which last year became the third euro-region country to request a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Sonangol owned 11.6 per cent of Banco Comercial Portugues, Portugal's second-biggest publicly traded bank in terms of market value, as of last June. Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, owned 10 per cent of Portugal's Banco BPI SA and 10 percent of Zon Multimedia SGPS SA , Portugal's biggest cable television operator. Angola is Africa's second-biggest oil producer.

The unequal development that characterises the world today is forcing vastly more and more people to look for a better future in another country. In the last few decades international migration has grown enormously. The neo-liberal policies that dominate the process of globalisation today have accelerated international migration, providing capital with an ever cheaper work force, says this report from the Human Rights Programme at CETIM.

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 International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) Committee is seeking organisation's activities for the next International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia in 2012 and have issued a letter relating to the day which can be read through the link provided.