Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade announced the dismissal of Latif Gueye, a Senegalese citizen and head of the humanitarian organisation Africa Helps Africa, on national television, accusing him of committing "extremely serious errors" for his alleged role in trafficking AIDS drugs that were meant for Africa but were sold in Europe.

The external debt of developing countries should not just be cancelled but the debtors compensated, civil society activists told a meeting of international officials, business leaders, scientists and NGO members in Prague Saturday.

This is a unique opportunity to work alongside the South African National Parks Board (SANP) to help in the conservation and management of their 18 National Parks, which encompasses much of the country's unique fauna, flora and cultural sites.

The Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University has released a report on an expert workshop it held in December 2001 to discuss human rights NGO capacity building. The report includes principles and assumptions guiding human rights capacity building work, critical issues in program design and implementation, and examines questions related to hierarchy and power dynamics the emerge in the context of capacity building.

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The Emergency Management Unit has to deliver food assistance to over 345 000 drought-affected Namibians despite pledging to start the humanitarian exercise early this week.

The private sector, largely perceived as ethical in its business dealings, is as corrupt as the public sector, a new report says. The report by the Centre for Law and Research, accuses the sector of devising cunning strategies to evade the payment of tax.

A report was sent to President Thabo Mbeki and members of his cabinet on Tuesday calling on government to hold corporates accountable for damage done to the environment. The report, released by groundWork, a non-governmental organisation, stated that government had consistently failed to use the law, licences or sanctions to hold accountable corporate companies implicated in damaging the environment.

South Africa's financial contributions to international relief programmes in Africa had halved during the past three years from R12,1-million to R6-million, according to the foreign affairs department's annual report for the year ending March 2002.

Agencies working to relieve famine in southern Africa have embarked on a comprehensive training scheme to educate employees to avoid child abuse. This is to prevent a repeat of the widespread sexual abuse of children by aid workers revealed during the recent west African refugee crisis.

If the bribery and cronyism that have so incensed anti-corruption crusaders are to be exposed and opposed, so too must corporate profiteering and monopolistic practices which heap misery upon people and plunder natural resources the world over. Above all, stresses Aziz Choudry, a clear position must be taken to confront the corrupt worldview which underpins the neoliberal agenda of shaping the world in the interests of big business.

Zambia National Students Union (ZANASU) president Godfrey Kumwenda, who represented Zambia at a congress in Windhoek, Namibia, said students wanted governments in the SADC region to abandon policies that pleased western capitalists, especially with regards to the privatisation of the education sector.

The Swaziland Royal Police, acting on a court order, raided Channel S, the only privately-owned television station in the country, and confiscated a video tape containing a sermon that has been termed by the Swazi government as "threatening the foundations of the kingdom."

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said last week that shareholders were failing to call companies to account for poor corporate governance. Speaking at a conference on shareholder activism, Manuel said that while shareholders had a right to oversee the affairs of a company, this right was "tragically too often ignored".

In a submission to the ILO Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalisation, which holds its third meeting in Geneva on 12 - 16 October, the ICFTU has called for social governance and regulation to be put at the centre of globalisation. The ICFTU submission points to the tremendous imbalance between economic and social interests in the world economy, with financial crises hitting a succession of countries over recent years, major companies collapsing due to dishonesty, mismanagement and corruption, and increasing violations of workers' rights around the world.

Richard Feachem, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said that the fund will run out of money by the middle of next year unless it receives new donations, the Boston Globe reports. The fund has received $2.1 billion in pledges but has collected only $500 million.

In this overview of world capitalism, William K. Tabb confronts the prevailing view of globalization as the steamroller against which even the most powerful nations are helpless. Tabb describes how institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation have focused on neoliberal goals, devising regulatory frameworks to provide greater freedom and opportunity for capital at the expense of social need.

Indian group Paharpur will bid a second time for the Komatiland forests only if its concerns around good governance and fair play in the bidding process are addressed, it says.

The global fund to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria has appointed private auditors to oversee its projects in Asia and Africa in an attempt to cut corruption and inefficiency.

A report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) calls for a major increase in the international response to dealing with the three major killers of HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. The report argues that the tools to address the diseases are available, but are inequitably distributed and says the benefits of fighting the diseases in the long term far outweigh the costs of their control.