The European Commission has issued a communication to the Council and the European Parliament on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), setting out clearly the way forward and the issues at stake to conclude these important trade pacts. The Commission sees full EPAs as essential to enable ACP states to play a full part in international trade.

The Human Dignity and Human Rights Caucus, a World Social Forum-related coalition of human rights and development organisations, has been organising human rights events in the framework of the World Social Forum since 2002. In 2008, the Forum will be held as a Global Day of Action in many different places around the world. At the same time, the human rights movement will be celebrating, in diverse ways, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

China has signed its largest single deal in Africa with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): a $5 billion loan to develop infrastructures, mining, bioenergy, forestry and agriculture. Infrastructure Minister Pierre Lumbi said the money will be spent on building roads, railroads, hospitals, health centres, housing and universities.

Aid agencies working in Sudan's Darfur hope incoming United Nations and African Union peacekeepers will help protect them, but there are also fears they could spark new violence against unarmed relief staff. The 26,000-person hybrid force is due to arrive in Darfur in the coming months against a backdrop of escalating violence targeting the world's largest humanitarian relief operation.

Information technology company Hewlett Packard (HP) has donated US$5 million to non-profit organisations to help businesses in low-income countries. The HP Microenterprise Development Program provides equipment, cash and training resources to help microenterprises — businesses with five or fewer employees, minimal start-up capital and little to no access to the traditional banking sector — develop and succeed.

This InBrief presents a preliminary overview of some methodological issues linked to the design of a monitoring mechanism for the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states and the European Union (EU) countries. The authors conclude that there is no ready-made approach for monitoring EPA negotiations and implementation.

Brazil has announced that it would nearly double a $1.3 billion credit line to Angola in a move to drum up business for Brazilian firms and help the African nation rebuild its economy. Brazil, keen to expand its influence in Africa and tap into the impoverished continent's vast mineral wealth, has been providing a revolving credit line to oil-rich Angola since 1995.

Today's development agenda is ever more focused on results. This book raises questions about how results and outcomes are evaluated, and reflects on notions of 'success' in colonial and contemporary development policy. The first part of the book examines colonial attempts in Kigezi, in south-western Uganda, to introduce cash crops, soil conservation practices, and tenure reforms.

A Nobel prize-winning scientist who reportedly claimed Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence is no longer welcome to deliver a lecture at London's Science Museum, the museum said. James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering DNA, drew widespread outrage when he told The Sunday Times that Africans and Europeans did not share the same brain power.

One of the world’s most respected scientists is embroiled in an extraordinary row after claiming that black people are less intelligent than white people. James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, has provoked outrage with his comments, made ahead of his arrival in Britain.

Applications are invited from nationals of non-OECD countries for a number of two-year fellowships to work on development and the role of developing countries in the world political economy. Up to six such fellowships will be awarded in each of the next five years, beginning in September 2008, for a year’s study at Oxford followed by a year at Princeton. Post-holders will be provided with appropriate stipends sufficient to cover full living costs. The programme intends to establish a network of leading scholar-practitioners in global governance.

Environmental groups in Gabon demanded on Thursday the government reveal the terms of a $3 billion iron ore mining deal with China, saying they feared the huge project could damage an area of virgin forest. The project, awarded to state-owned China National Machinery & Equipment Import & Export Corp., is for the construction of an big iron ore mine in the Belinga mountains of Gabon's remote northeast Ogooue-Ivindo province. The Chinese group expects to complete the mine in three years.

Doris Lessing, author of dozens of works from short stories to science fiction, including the classic ‘The Golden Notebook,’ won the Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday. She was praised by the judges for her “scepticism, fire and visionary power.” Because of her criticism of the South African regime, and its apartheid system, she was prohibited from entering the country between 1956 and 1995. Lessing, who was a member of the British Communist Party in the 1950s, had also campaigned against nuclear weapons.

The Center for Reproductive Rights along with partners filed the first human rights legal challenge to a faith-based sex-education program based in the U.S. The program, TeenSTAR, promotes abstinence, discourages the use of contraception, reinforces gender stereotypes, and fosters discrimination against the LGBT community. If the case is successful, it could lay the groundwork for more successful challenges against similar faith-based programs (including those funded by the U.S.-government) in other countries around the world.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's plan to create a regional lending bank will be beneficial for South America. The former World Bank economist said the Bank of the South, due to be founded in Caracas next month, is an important initiative aimed at helping boost Latin America's development.

The International Monetary Fund has warned Congo to beware of the macroeconomic effects of a planned $5 billion loan from China to modernise the vast African country's decrepit infrastructure and mining industry. President Joseph Kabila's government announced plans last month for the huge loan from China, which would be paid back partly in mining concessions and tolls from road and railways.

On October 10th, 2007, the World Day against the Death Penalty focuses on the proposed UN General Assembly resolution for a universal moratorium on executions. The proposal would save lives and give the population of retentionist states an opportunity to see for themselves that a pause in death sentences does not lead to higher crime rates.

Oxfam’s Country Programme Managers never cease to amaze. They make decisions that affect the lives of millions in whole countries and provide solutions that bring lasting changes to all sorts of communities the world over. Right now, we’re looking to build a pool of candidates from a wide range of backgrounds with humanitarian and relief experience to take on these roles So if you can bring direction to some of the world’s most challenging environments in humanitarian, development and advocacy work, read on.

The World Bank is preparing to launch its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) which aims to catalyse the market for carbon emissions credits from avoided deforestation, according to watchdog organization, The Bretton Woods Project. However many forestry experts are unconvinced, given the possibility that this framework will benefit industrial scale logging and in light of previous IFI-induced forestry disasters, for example in the DRC.

Over 20,000 girls under 15 at high risk of FGM in England and Wales A study published by FORWARD, the UK charity which leads the campaign to eliminate female genital mutilation (FGM), reveals that over 20,000 girls under 15 could be at risk of FGM in the UK.