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.

The reduction in barriers to international trade can increase and create incomes for the poor and provide more resources to fight poverty, says a paper produced by the UK Department for International Development. The main findings of the paper are that trade liberalisation can have a positive impact on poverty only if developing and developed countries agree in adopting domestic and international trade policies based on best practices and tailored to individual circumstances.

A dismissed Anglo Platinum manager has claimed that his former colleagues made racist remarks and that he lost his job for raising complaints about this and for calling union members "comrades".

This book argues that HIV/AIDS is an epidemic of globalisation. Its trajectory can be directly linked to global inequality. Globalisation determines the scale and scope of HIV/AIDS, and HIV/AIDS will shape international political, economic and social relations in the first decades of this century. Above all, HIV/AIDS shows the bankruptcy of national and international public health policy.

Orthodox economists sometimes get it wrong. When a government fixes the prices of various goods below what they cost to produce, they fail to provide the necessary subsidy to fill the gap. The orthodox theory predicts that there will be empty shelves in the shops. But in Zimbabwe, this is not how things have turned out. Retailers there have indeed run out of all manner of price-controlled goods.

Scientists from seven developing countries are to take part in a new US$26-million research project to unravel the mysteries of soil biodiversity. The project, launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will carry out research into tropical soil-dwelling organisms such as insects, beetles, fungi, worms and bacteria.

These essays review Africa's economic performance over the last two decades from a contemporary historical perspective. The contributors include Professor Luhanga, and Professor Issa Shivji, from the University of Dar es Salaam. They argue that the problem in East Africa is the lack of integration into a world economy and culture; and simultaneously, the African way of life developing as a hybrid of ideas, values and behaviour which erodes independent/national identities and political and economic life.

The NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court (Coalition) has expressed concern that some candidates for judgeships at the newly-formed International Criminal Court (ICC) have not been nominated in accordance with the criteria provided in the Rome Statute of the ICC, or with the nomination procedures adopted by the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the ICC's governing body.

The recent White House proposal to aid impoverished countries if they drop trade barriers and open their markets is likely to substantially accelerate the misery index in Latin America and Africa, the main targets of the $5 billion plan. Entitled the Millennium Challenge Account, the administration says it will be doled out to countries like Senegal, Ghana, Bolivia, and Honduras if they institute "the rule of law," as well as "sound fiscal policies." This latter includes free trade for "American goods and services." But 15 years of free trade and open markets have inflicted ruinous damage on poor countries in Latin America and Africa.

AIDS threatens our very raison d'etre; our ability to live and our instinct to create life. Little wonder, therefore, that HIV and AIDS are so feared. As the articles in this IRIN World AIDS Day web special (http://www.irinnews.org/webspecials/aids/) illustrates, fear is at the heart of much of the stigma and discrimination that surrounds HIV and AIDS.
Related Link: http://www.kff.org/worldaidsday/

The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) has noted with concern the continued harassment of The Daily News by ZANU PF supporters and state agents. The MMPZ described the “blatant acts of intolerance” as a violation of the public's right to access information through media of their choice.

Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin has said trade between Africa and China should be on an equal footing whereby both benefit. Addressing a meeting in Addis Ababa on trade between China and the African continent, he said that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) must play a key role in forging any trade relations between the two.

Fighting broke out on Wednesday in northwestern Cote d'Ivoire between rebels and loyalist forces, army spokesman Lt-Col Jules Yao Yao said in a televised statement.

A task force investigating the extent of plunder of national resources has frozen 41 bank accounts of implicated individuals.

The Japanese Government has given Kenya over Sh7 million to finance health projects across the country. The funds were granted to St John's Ambulance and Irigiro Community Self Help Group (ICSHG) to establish and construct proposed health projects.