When Marie Antoinette wanted to escape the confines and pressures of courtly life, she retreated to her quaint Petit Hameau where she and her companions donned their finest peasant frocks and pretended to be poor. A century later, fashionable Londoners took that pauper fantasy to a new extreme -- nocturnally touring East London's slums, where they gawked at ladies of the night and coined the phrase "slumming it."

If it hadn’t been drowned out by the ongoing wars in Mali and Syria, you would have heard all about the brutal civil war that broke out in the Central African Republic (CAR) in December of 2012. I guess there's only so much war you can read about at any given time, but the one currently tearing through the bush of the Central African Republic is a significant one. One UN official is even claiming a high threat of genocide in the coming months as Christian and Muslim militias face off in a war of escalating sectarian violence.

Soon after the end of the M23 rebellion that threw parts of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into conflict for much of the last two years, a blog post titled "We Stopped M23" appeared on the website of a California-based nonprofit called Falling Whistles. The slick homepage describes the organization as “a campaign for peace in Congo." It urges visitors to “be a whistleblower for peace” by purchasing stylish metal whistles, hung on a chain or black cord, from the organization's online store.

In 2010, I returned to London to meet again with the nation-branding consultants I had interviewed three years earlier. I expected to encounter a very different portrait of the field from the one that had been painted for me a few years earlier. Aftershocks from the global financial crisis of 2008 – 2009 continued to make themselves felt, upending the foundations of market value.

The M23 rebel group declared an end to its 20-month rebellion in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, saying it was ready to disarm its troops and pursue a political solution. The movement has decided "to end its rebellion from this day forward and pursue, by purely political means, the search for solutions to the root causes that led to its creation," M23 leader Bertrand Bisimwa said in a statement.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has pledged to review a media law passed by parliament that has sparked outrage among the media. Kenyatta asked journalists on Saturday to report more responsibly, but said he would closely examine the law, which will only become effective once he signs it. "I shall look at the bill once it is forwarded to me with a view to identifying and addressing possible grey areas to ensure the new media law conforms to the constitution," a statement from the presidency said, quoting Kenyatta at a public rally near the capital Nairobi.

The United Nations announced a milestone this week. For the first time, a UN-led force helped beat back a rebel group to protect a civilian population. Instead of its usual defense-only peacekeeping, the UN engaged in aggressive peace enforcement – with helicopters, snipers, and artillery. The Security Council authorized the unprecedented offensive last March for Congo. But the UN’s Force Intervention Brigade only began fighting in August, alongside Congo’s military, against a rebel force known as M23.

Abhijit Sanyal is sitting on a beach-chair watching frothy waves roll in from the Indian Ocean. He arrived in Tanzania a year ago after a career in his native India with Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant. ChemiCotex, an industrial company in Dar es Salaam, hired him as chief executive to oversee the expansion of its “tooth-and-nail business”, which dominates the Tanzanian market for dental care and metal goods.