The national health department says South Africans must be proud and celebrate that the country will be getting money from the Global Fund to fight AIDS. Health department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said out of more than 100 countries that had applied for grants, South Africa was among the 31 countries that were in discussion with the Fund to work out details of allocation, disbursement and accountability.

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has listed its efforts to reach women in poor, hard-to-reach communities with vaccine against maternal and neo-natal tetanus, saying such steps would save the lives of thousands of women and their new-born babies.

Mining company Anglo American has announced that it will provide antiretroviral therapy to its HIV-positive employees in Southern Africa who do not already qualify for treatment under medical aid schemes.

Sustaining a vibrant civic movement in neo-liberal post election Zimbabwe is a nightmare. What’s more the people of Zimbabwe may have to inhabit this nightmare for the few more years that the current regime may still retain power, writes Hopewell Gumbo.

Although it has approved $1.6 billion in grants for programs in more than 40 countries, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has not yet distributed any money, largely because of "demands led by the Bush administration" that the fund create an aid-delivery mechanism "from scratch," the Wall Street Journal reports.

Malawi, battling to cope with food shortages, has been asked to return at least US $8 million in development aid because it allegedly mismanaged the money.

Ireland has pledged Euros 250,000 to tackle drought in eastern Ethiopia, the Irish embassy in Addis Ababa said. The money will be used to help Kereyou pastoralists whose livelihoods are in danger from the lack of rain. The funding is part of Ireland's Euros 3.69 million Africa-wide programme to tackle emergencies across the continent.

A new book, Earthsummit.biz by Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner, describes the growing role of corporations in global decision making in the ten years between the Rio Earth Summit and the upcoming Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The World Bank has released its long awaited draft policy on forests. The proposed policy threatens most of the world's remaining forests with environmentally damaging industrial forest management financed by taxpayers through the World Bank. It is inappropriate for the World Bank to subsidize rainforest destruction. Please tell them so by registering your concern.

South African President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday criticized officials in charge of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for approving a $60 million grant to KwaZulu-Natal province that had not received clearance from the central government, as stipulated in the fund's rules.

Aid started streaming in for the snow-hit Eastern Cape areas of Elliot and Cala on Monday. Queenstown's Woolworth’s contributed R110 000 in blankets and food on Monday. Weirs Cash & Carry donated maize meal, bread flour, cooking oil, sugar, tea, coffee, samp, soup, tinned meats and fish and baby food, valued at R100 000, and blankets, valued at R10 000, were delivered free of charge to the Queenstown commando.

Norway is mobilising one of its biggest aid efforts yet to rush food to 13-million people in danger of famine in southern Africa. The Norwegian military has donated more than 200 surplus all-terrain trucks, while the government granted $2,58-million (R25 8000). The Norwegian shipping concern Leif Hoegh & Co ASA is donating space aboard its automobile transport ship Haul Europe to bring about 230 trucks to Durban.

The World Bank President has asked his staff to prepare a human rights strategy. The Bank has previously avoided talking directly about a role for itself in supporting human rights, despite pressure to do so emanating from the United Nations bodies and NGOs. But concerns have already been raised about the extent to which the Bank will be ready to be held accountable for its performance against the full set of relevant rights.

Is the world "on the right track" in terms of poverty reduction? The World Bank seems to believe so. However Sanjay Reddy and Thomas Pogge of Columbia University, in a paper entitled "How not to count the poor" give a scathing account of the problems with the World Bank's poverty numbers.

The Human Development Report, an annual measurement of global poverty issued by the United Nations Development Programme, once again provides an indicator of Africa's economic woes. A total of 27 African countries are included on the list of the world's 173 least developed nations, and 52 of the countries at the bottom are African. Sierra Leone, which has been racked by war for the past decade, ranks as the worst place to live.

Corrupt practices in the private sector are on the increase, Institute of Southern African Development (ISAD) president Lewis Mosho has observed. Mosho said ISAD has identified that various forms of corruption exist in private sector firms and professional associations in their business dealings among themselves and between them and government institutions.

groundWork, a local environmental NGO, is joining forces with international NGOs - such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, CorpWatch, Third World Network, Corporate Europe Observatory and the Goldman Foundation - as well as local NGO’s and community based organisations to host a variety of exciting events during the week prior to the WSSD. These activities will form part of a Corporate Accountability Week, which will take place from the 19th - 23rd August in Sandton.

The Digital Freedom Network is looking for experienced writers throughout the world to write articles on a volunteer basis about local human rights issues. The articles are usually 500-1500 words in length and will be published on the organization's Web site, www.dfn.org.

From 26 August to 4 September the world's leaders will be meeting in Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Develoment (WSSD), to agree a strategy for curing the world's environmental and social ills, building on the landmark successes of the Rio Earth Summit ten years ago. Or so the publicity would have us believe. In fact, fears are growing that the summit will be seized as an opportunity to further push the corporate-led globalisation agenda, with genuine environmental and social concerns being sidelined as governments push their own vested interests and those of the rash of corporations and corporate lobby groups attending the summit.

By the second day of the UN's Bali Preparatory Committee (PrepComm) for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), most delegates from the Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) oscillated between disgust and depression. The "Chairman's Report"--the summary language that all the world governments were trying to agree upon--was little more than a neoliberal anti-environmental agenda. Naty Bernardino of the International South Group Network called it "Rio minus 10." As the governmental delegates were debating the language for the final declaration, an angry UN official, thinking his microphone had been turned off, was overhead lamenting, "What are we going to do about the United States?"