Bureaucrats are blocking attempts to dispense food relief urgently needed for thousands of poverty-stricken rural people, according to an NGO activist. This accusation follows the discovery of a horrifying statistic - 150 000 South African families are starving. The audit may be just the tip of the iceberg because the study covers only 13 areas that have been identified as economically depressed.

European trade commissioner Pascal Lamy has got a hold of your future and is doing all he can to hand it over to the transnational corporations. The vehicle for Lamy's villainy is an obscure trade agreement called GATS, or the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The agreement itself may be a less-than-riveting read, but its significance is relatively easy to grasp. All human activities are to become, in the fullness of time, profit-oriented commodities that can be invested in and traded, says this article on the web site of the Trans-National Institute.

Although the global community may not be making much progress on the daunting environmental and social problems humanity faces, local and grassroots initiatives are providing cause for optimism, according to the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World report.

World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks held late last year failed to resolve the issue of access to generic medicines in developing countries after the United States blocked an agreement on granting easier access to the drugs. "Its a tragedy that there is no solution after one year of talks ... millions of people have died from [infectious] diseases this year. The rich countries don't realise how much this has affected poor countries," head of international affairs for treatment lobby group Act-Up Paris, Gaëlle Krikorian, told PlusNews.

The worm has finally turned. In mid-December Kenya Telkom's monopoly, international internet connection company Jambonet decided to block a number of its ports claiming they "were being used to transmit VOIP traffic." The net result was a near two-day shutdown of internet services in Kenya a week before the elections. Private sector lobby groups TESPOK and the Cyber Cafe Operators Association of Kenya first protested and then decided to fight back.

This book, edited by John Feffer, tells an untold story - the life-affirming response of ordinary people around the world to the 'irreversible' juggernaut of the global economy. Many books contain cogent intellectual critiques. Here, in contrast, we see the modest attempts to create alternatives by those for whom globalization has no need. There is no single response but many different ones, all sharing important common features: meeting basic needs, making sustainable, culturally appropriate improvements to people's lives, and on the basis of active civic participation, solidarity and learning one from another.

The British Embassy has announced a further £30 million (R430m) contribution for emergency assistance in Africa. Half the contribution, R215m, will be put to humanitarian assistance and recovery programmes across Southern Africa and the other half will go to Ethiopia.

Three Million US dollars will be granted by the French government in the months of March and April, to support demining programmes and the resettlement of displaced people in Angola.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, military peacekeeping forces have increasingly intervened in countries in conflict, forcing a more direct engagement than ever before between the military, local populations and humanitarian agencies. Military movement into what has traditionally been 'humanitarian space', raises significant issues of principle, as well as policy and operational questions, for the entire international community, including governments, the military, humanitarian agencies and the UN. It is essential that these two roles - impartial humanitarian assistance as a response to an urgent and inalienable right, and peace operations with their inevitably partial and political mandates - are kept separate, argues a paper by the The Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN).

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and foreign direct investment (FDI) are very much like identical twins in the government's economic policy. President Kufuor has made the development of ICT one of the cornerstones of his vision for Ghana's development. He has established a high-powered commission to oversee its development. The first two years of his administration have seen him also making first hand contacts around the world to interest investors in Ghana.

Aidspan is pleased to announce the launch of "GLOBAL FUND OBSERVER" (GFO), a free email-based newsletter and related discussion forum. GFO provides an independent platform for news, analysis and commentary about the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Lesotho National Insurance Group (LNIG) is suing the weekly tabloid "Mohahlaula", for publishing a news item that the company has deemed to be damaging to its business activities. In its 15 November 2002 edition, the publication reported that the company was facing possible bankruptcy due to alleged mismanagement of funds.

Over the past 50 years, forced displacement has been a major obstacle to development and the fight against poverty. Despite the efforts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and others to find 'durable solutions' for those who are forced to flee their homes, attitudes have, if anything, hardened towards refugees and asylum-seekers.

Three months ago the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it had adopted a new set of lending guidelines that would permit borrowing countries to take control of their economies like never before. But over the past week, the Fund flexed its muscles over two of the world's poorest countries and imposed conditions that critics predict will be disastrous for the poor in those nations -- and that signified business as usual for the Washington-based institution. The IMF told Zambia -- an African country ravaged by debt, mismanagement, and disease -- that it will delay one billion dollars in debt relief until the poor nation sells its state-owned commercial bank, the Zambia National Commercial Bank.

The United States has held out against other members of the World Trade Organisation, refusing to agree to a third draft of an agreement on how to grant developing countries wider access to low-cost drugs, including antiretroviral medications, the Associated Press reports.

"Poverty and violence" are the tragic reasons pushing thousands of people to leave their home countries in search of a better future. Economic globalisation and the development disparities it has produced in the southern hemisphere and in Eastern European transition countries are every day pushing thousands of people to leave their home countries to find a form of subsistence in wealthier lands, says the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

This book provides a powerful and probing critique of the myths, meanings, promises, and perils of globalization, postcoloniality, and other currently popular discourses by interrogating their implications for Africa and African studies. It challenges misrepresentations and misappropriations of Africa in academic texts and in the popular media and reaffirms the importance of progressive nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and internationalism for Africa’s reconstruction, a project in which universities and African intellectuals—including those in the North—have a critical role to play in promoting productive trans-national literacy and conversations across the Atlantic.

The Malawi Human Rights Commission has observed with "great concern" public utterances from some quarters - especially politicians - that carry racial discrimination overtones. "The Commission has also received complaints from indigenous and non-indigenous Malawians, as well as people of other nationalities, that they have been victims of racial abuse," said a press release.

In a bid to revive what was once a diverse and dynamic press, several journalists in Zanzibar last week launched the archipelago's first private newspaper for 40 years.

President Thabo Mbeki has said that South Africa still has a long way to go if it is to create a non-racial society. The bulk of the economy, including the land, remains predominantly white-owned, nine years after the end of apartheid, he said in an opening speech to the African National Congress convention.