Ms Jane Kiragu, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Steering Committee, has been suspended following a marathon meeting on Monday with the Committee's chairman, Rev Mutava Musyimi. Her appointment, ten days earlier, had provoked spirited protests from a section of the 34-member strong committee, who viewed it as unilateral and a Government scheme to infiltrate and influence its work.

The Prevention of Corruption Bureau (PCB) has brought the Mbulu District Mangistrate, Mr Wallace Manolo, to court for allegedly soliciting and receiving bribes from an individual due to appear in his court on trial.

Hopes within Uganda's opposition that donors will press President Yoweri Museveni not to amend the 1995 constitution to allow him to run for the 2006 presidential election were shattered last week when Western diplomats said they will not interfere with the country's transitional process. However, the diplomats warned that economic and political gains that the country had achieved in the past decade might be lost unless the government handled the transition to the 2006 presidential election well.

The World Bank Group has refused to improve the way it operates, says a media advisory from Friends of the Earth International. The Bank's Board decided to act upon only very few among many concrete steps recommended by a key report. The Extractive Industries Review (EIR), commissioned by World Bank President James Wolfensohn, recently concluded that financial support for projects in the oil, mining and gas sectors have not led to direct poverty alleviation. The EIR made specific recommendations to improve the World Bank's policies and practices. However, in a Board meeting, World Bank Management and its Board failed to respond with concrete commitments to change the way the Bank operates and ensure poverty reduction results from its investments.

"We, the trade and economic justice activists from various civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, including the media, representatives of the business sector, academics, farmers and peasant movements, labour, students, consumer movements met in Nyanga to review post-Cancun developments especially negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Economic Partnership Agreements with the EU. We note that these have got far-reaching implications on national economies, people's livelihoods and the role of the state as a provider of basic social services: health, education, water, transport, food etc."

The trade liberalization framework presented to the WTO General Council is a betrayal of the world’s poor, according to the Asian trade policy research NGO, Focus o­n the Global South. Speaking in Geneva, their senior trade analyst Aileen Kwa said that the current negotiations are being used by the rich industrialized countries – especially the US and the EU – to force open developing country markets and to hide their own massive agricultural subsidies. "If the proposed framework is implemented, the inevitable result will be deindustrialization of the developing world and the end of small-scale farming," said Kwa. "Millions of workers will lose their jobs and millions of farmers will lose their livelihoods."

The inauguration of Somalia's proposed transitional parliament has been postponed because some clans had not completed the process of nominating members, sources close to the Somali reconciliation conference said on Friday. The inauguration of the parliament has now been tentatively scheduled for 4 August, when it is hoped that all the clans would have handed in their lists of nominated MPs to the foreign ministers, who make up the IGAD Facilitation Committee steering the peace process.

Twenty-six people, including a senior manager of the Free State department of education appeared in the Bloemfontein Magistrate's Court on charges including fraud and corruption. The court appearances follow a joint investigation by the South African Police Service and the anti corruption unit of the Free State education department into allegations of corruption over the awarding of tenders during a three year period.

UN human rights experts have uncovered three mass graves packed with at least 99 bodies in the northern town of Korhogo, where heavy clashed between rival rebel factions took place in June. In a statement released by the UN mission in the country (ONUCI) it was reported that 'some of these people were killed by bullets and, according to reliable and consistent witness accounts, others suffocated to death.'

Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika's administration has made its first arrest for fraud and corruption since coming to office in May of this year. The deputy research director of the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF), Humphreys Mvula, was arrested on Friday in Blantyre. Mvula, chief executive of the state-run Shire Bus Lone, Malawi's biggest bus company, is being investigated by the Anti-Corruption Bureau after allegations of dubious purchases of a new fleet of buses and spare parts.

Japan, Kenya's third largest bilateral donor, has joined calls for President Kibaki to sack government officials linked to corruption. The Deputy Chief of Mission, Mr Takuji Hanatani said that he believed 'President Kibaki should demonstrate his political determination by asking those ministers implicated to step aside until investigations are completed.'

Even though Gabon has some 800 km of coastline, it is forced to import more than 7,000 tonnes of fish every year. But with a new grant from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the government hopes to change all that. "The US$ 270,000 grant from the FAO will allow Gabon to plan a development strategy for the fishing industry for the long-term, something we've never done before," Georges Mba Asseko, the government official in charge of fisheries, told IRIN in an interview.

With sub-Saharan Africa on the verge of the largest polio epidemic in recent history, a United Nations-backed campaign to eradicate the virus has hailed resumption of immunization in the Nigerian State of Kano, seen as vital for eliminating the disease that once paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children worldwide each year. Immunization campaigns were suspended in various northern states of Nigeria in August 2003 following concerns by public figures regarding the safety of oral polio vaccine (OPV), including rumours that it was contaminated by the HIV virus or that it could sterilize young girls.

Zimbabwe's worsening economic conditions were one of the key reasons for the growing number of children on the streets, according to a recent survey. Results from an assessment of children living and working on the streets in urban areas around the capital, Harare, showed that the majority ended up here as a result of poverty, sexual or physical abuse and family breakdown. Of the 450 children interviewed by Zimbabwe's National Council for the Welfare of Children, with support from UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), 58 percent had become homeless during the last year.

While negotiators from the United States and the European Union (EU) declared victory in rescuing global trade talks in the early hours on Sunday at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) denounced the results as a sell-out of poor countries and the environment. "After days of closed-door negotiations, rich countries have delivered a deeply unbalanced text as a take-it-or-leave-it option," said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam International's Geneva office. "This puts developing countries in the unfair position of having to accept a bad deal or reject and get blamed by the U.S. and the EU for failure."

The African Union (AU) announced plans to transform its monitoring mission in Darfur to a fully-fledged peacekeeping mission to tackle the on-going atrocities in western Sudan, where up to 1 million people have been displaced and about 50,000 killed. AU armed forces, however, need transport and logistical support to ensure quick, effective deployment of the monitoring mission which is still not up to full capacity.

* SMS FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS: Use your mobile phone to sign the petition in support of the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Send a message to: +27832933934, with the word ‘petition’ and your name in the message. You will only be charged the cost set by your network provider for sending an international SMS. More information http://www.pambazuka.org/petition/smssocial.php

* Comment and Analysis: Taking control of Africa’s resources
* Pan-African Postcard: Gluttons who vomit on shoes and the mental revolution
* Conflicts and Emergencies: Peace is in the stomach
* Human Rights: Zimbabwe rights groups must not be banned, says Amnesty
* Refugees and Forced Migration: Human trafficking in Africa
* Women and Gender: Remittances and economic development
* Development: Rich countries threaten world trade talks
* Corruption: World Bank debars Lesotho corruption company
* HIV/AIDS: Big Pharma – part of the problem or the solution?
* Fundraising and Useful Resources: International Activist Award

Despite strong reservations by the United States, Japan and Germany over proposed new global taxes, the United Nations is set to take centre-stage in the longstanding controversy over new sources of innovative funding for the world's poorer nations. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned that unless current development assistance is doubled to 100 billion dollars annually, the world's 132 developing nations will fail to meet their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

It is clear that current trade rules and trade policies -whether established or imposed by intergovernmental organizations or powerful Governments - are an obstacle to fair and sustainable development and must be made subservient to those rights - individual and collective -which the peoples of the world have established in the United Nations during the last century. In other words, alternative approaches and paradigms to the management of trade - national, regional and international - are essential, argues this article on the Choike website.

The three parties that back Niger's president on Wednesday won local elections, taking 62 percent of the 3 747 municipal seats in the West African state, the electoral commission said. Voters in Niger went to the polls on Saturday in a poll seen as an important step in paving the way to democracy in one of the world's poorest countries.