More than 2.6 billion people - over 40 per cent of the world's population - do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water, warns a major report released by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Entitled 'Meeting the Millennium Development Goals drinking water and sanitation target - A mid-term assessment of progress', the report details the progress of individual countries, regions, and the world as a whole between the MDG baseline year of 1990 and the half-way mark of 2002.

Nigeria's Senate has ordered a subsidiary of petroleum giant Royal/Dutch Shell to pay a Nigerian ethnic group US$1.5 billion (euro1.2 billion) for oil spills in their homelands, but the legislative body can't enforce the resolution, an official said Wednesday.

At least 46 residents in the Southern Free State's Naledi Municipality, whose families were removed from their homes thirty years ago to create a buffer between Blacks and Whites, have been compensated. Speaking at the occasion, the Chief Land Claims Commissioner, Tozi Gwanya, said that they had orders from the President to settle all of the country's 27,000 outstanding claims by the end of 2005.

The department of agriculture and land affairs has reiterated that 30% of farm land should be owned by black South Africans in the next 10 years. Briefing Parliament's committee on agriculture and land affairs, Bongi Njobe, the department's director general, also said that established farmers should make 10% of their agricultural land available to farm workers for farming activities.

Police this week violently dispersed hundreds of protesters from the Maasai community who had gone to present a petition to the British High Commissioner, Edward Clay, demanding back land now in the hands of ranchers. Scores of demonstrators were arrested and clubbed by police in Nairobi when they defied an order against the march.

Kenyan police shot dead a 70 year old Masai man whilst he was grazing his cattle on private land given to British settlers 100 years ago. Four other herdsmen were also injured in the incident last Saturday. A local Masai leader said that the police opened fire after herdsmen were forced by drought to graze their cattle on private ranchland. Police and farmers say the grazing is part of a Masai campaign to illegally seize land.

A multibillion-dollar project designed to boost South Africa's diminishing power-generation capacity could be up and running by 2007 if the Democratic Republic of Congo signs an inter-governmental memorandum of understanding by the end of the year. Many have now pinned their hopes on the construction of a $7.3-billion hydropower station at Inga Dam, on the Congo River, as the key to reducing future power shortages.

World Rivers Review, produced by the International Rivers Network, is the foremost international publication devoted to river issues and appropriate freshwater management. It draws on an extensive international network of information sources and writers, including many non-governmental organizations representing indigenous, human rights and environmental issues.

The Popa Falls Dam proposed for the Okavango River in Namibia has a “potential fatal flaw,” according to the project’s preliminary environmental assessment. The report, which was released in June, warns that the dam would pose “significant ecological risks” to the Okavango Delta by trapping the river’s vital sediment, which serves a variety of key functions in the complex ecosystem. Twenty-six additional environmental impacts are listed that would require effective mitigation if the project is to move forward.

At least 25 hippopotami have died of a mysterious disease in Uganda's sprawling Queen Elizabeth National Park, authorities said Sunday. "We have sent experts to get samples from the carcasses and live ones to investigate the cause of these strange deaths," the Uganda Wildlife Authority's executive director Arthur Mugisha told AFP by telephone.

A cholera epidemic in villages along the Niger river has killed 27 people over the past four months and threatens to spread to the capital Niamey, a senior government health official said. Doctor Kiari, the head of the National System of Health Information (SNIS), told IRIN that 1,426 cases of cholera had been recorded between 3 May and 15 August, the last date for which figures were available.

Dust storms emanating from the Sahara have increased tenfold in 50 years, contributing to climate change as well as threatening human health and destroying coral reefs thousands of miles away. And one major cause is the replacement of the camel by four-wheel drive vehicles as the desert vehicle of choice. Andrew Goudie, professor of geography at Oxford University, blames the vehicles for destroying a thin crust of lichen and stones that has protected vast areas of the Sahara from the wind for centuries.

Since the mid-1990s, several countries in sub-Saharan Africa – others are Nigeria, Angola and Gabon – have experienced strong revenue growth from the petroleum industry. In most cases, however, this new wealth is not contributing to economic development or improving living standards. Rather, it has been used almost exclusively for the enrichment of the countries' leaders, and as a consequence most of the population remains poor and unprotected.

The former general manager of Malawi's state Petroleum Control Commission (PCC) was found guilt of graft this week. The case against Dennis Kambalame, the ex-PCC head, has taken a record two years and the guilty verdict marks the first victory for Malawi's official Anti-Corruption Bureau, formed in 1998.

France and the United States have begun a new race to compete for favours with undemocratic regimes in Africa. The competition is growing particularly in the oil- rich North and West Africa. Analysts believe that over the next five years a quarter of non-Gulf oil on the world market will come from sub-Saharan Africa.

The Kenyan Lands and Housing Minister, Amos Kimunya, has said that an "explosive" report on land grabbing will first be subjected to Cabinet scrutiny before it is made public. The minister told reporters that the report names prominent politicians both in the current and former regimes, high ranking military personnel and senior civil servants as having grabbed huge chunks of land, leaving millions of Kenyans landless.

Economic obligations on industrialized countries to ensure fair trade and reduction of Least Developed Countries’ (LDC) debt burden as well as environmental measures to control pollutants and ensure more equitable and appropriate use of natural resources were the subject of the workshop organized by Climate Network Africa entitled “Dialogue with East African Legislators on Climate Change and Sustainable Development”. To date, the growth of economies and emissions has occurred mostly in the industrialized countries. “Emissions is wealth”, has been the thinking of many. The workshop discussed the impacts of these emissions and what actions the legislators in East African region should take.

Environmental groups have expressed concern at Congo's plans to open up its rainforest for increased commercial logging. The country's government, currently $4.9 billion in debt, has been placing greater emphasis on the growth of the timber industry in the Congo Basin, which has the world's second largest stretches of virgin rainforest after the Amazon in South America. The logging policy has been encouraged by the World Bank - which makes its loans to the government conditional on the forest being opened up.

In his last meeting as chairperson, Benjamin Mkapa has called for the fast-tracking of the establishment of a financial and technical support system to implement land reforms in the region. Announcing the launch of SADC's regional Land Reform Committee, Mkapa said that SADC "cannot run away from our historical duty to set right these historical wrongs and injustices."

The Kenyan Masai vowed on Tuesday to intensify protests calling for the return of land given to British settlers 100 years ago after the government rejected their demand. Lands and Housing Minister, Amos Kimunya dismissed the Masai's claim, saying that "Kenya was reconstituted as a republic in 1963 and started to follow its own laws and not an agreement entered by some elders."