The cost of corruption represents five percent of the world economy - or more than 1.5 trillion dollars a year, according to World Bank figures published at a UN conference on corruption. Daniel Kaufman, director of global governance at the World Bank Institute told reporters on Wednesday that the figures were an approximate calculation - since corruption was largely clandestine - yet "realistic".

Robert Mugabe squandered millions last week in a desperate bid to address the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) after being denied the opportunity at the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria. Mugabe and his cronies lived it up at one of the city's plushest hotels - La Réserve, a spa on the shores of Lake Geneva. According to The Times of London, rooms at La Réserve start at £380 a night, with the presidential suite costing £4 500.

Investigators tracking the plunder of Kenya's resources during the regime of former President Daniel arap Moi have discovered that between $1 billion and $4 billion were shipped abroad illegally. The man leading the investigation said Wednesday that the goal of the probe was to retrieve as much as possible. "We have reached a stage where the Kenyan people have a right to know that this is an issue that we are taking extremely seriously, and to which we are applying the very best resources available,'' John Githongo, permanent presidential secretary for ethics and governance, told The Associated Press.

Malaysian-run textile factory Ramatex is once again being accused of unfair labour practices - this time by several hundred of its Asian workers. Filipino workers feel so strongly about their working conditions that they have sent an appeal to their government through its South African embassy. A petition signed by nearly 700 employees cites poor wages, cramped living conditions and health concerns as their most pressing grievances.

Strategies that governments in Sub-Saharan Africa have pursued over the last three to four decades have all sought to raise not only the Human Development Index but bring about comprehensive development as well. These strategies started with national development plans and inward looking import substitutions and protectionist policies. This review from the Malawi Economic Justice Network provides an overview of the process, outcomes and content, within the region's socio-political context, examining the pathways that were available to different stakeholders for engagement in the process, and how this participation and strategies are reflected in the policy outcomes. The paper further endeavours to catalyse thinking in analysing how the relationship between the conception and practice of the 'popular' Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers to previous initiatives such as the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the advent of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), let alone the new opportunities offered for poverty reduction in Africa.

Earlier this year a critic of the movement for global economic justice wrote a letter with several challenging questions that were sent to the email listserv of Mobilisation for Global Justice. The series of questions and answers available through the URL provided are based on the response composed by Soren Ambrose, Senior Policy Analyst with the 50 Years Is Enough Network. Questions relate to the austerity packages of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and cash crops.

The EU Trade Commissioner, Pascal Lamy concurred to the broad assumptions that the failure of Cancun was like an accident, which involved 148 cars on their way to a wedding. In explaining the accident, he forgot to mention (although casualty levels still not clear) that some of the victims escaped unhurt and they stood aside instead of helping those who were hurt. Among those who escaped unhurt, some were wearing helmets and others were putting on life jackets. Those who were hurt, most of them wore ordinary clothing and had no any other form of protection. But all of them still need to go to the wedding. And those who escaped unhurt should not just stand aside and assume that those hurt will uplift themselves. The unhurt must do something to ensure that everyone goes to the wedding where there is plenty of food and drink. Unfortunately, we are seeing a situation where the law of the jungle is being applied: survival of the fittest and elimination of the unfit, yet all of them want to celebrate together at the wedding. This is the stark reality that we find developed and developing countries in after the collapse of trade talks in Cancun, says this editorial from the Seatini Bulletin.

The Pambazuka News staff wish all our subscribers warm greetings and best wishes for the season and the New Year. This will be our last edition for 2003 and we will return with our next edition scheduled for 08 January 2004. Thanks for all your support during 2003, and particularly to those who have made donations to Pambazuka. Keep them rolling in!

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has begun identification of 16 sites for construction of HIV/AIDS detection-prevention-treatment centres across the Central African Republic, an official told IRIN on Friday. Funding for the programme would come from the HIV/AIDS Global Fund, the UNDP resident representative, Stan Nkwain, said. "This is a legitimate ambition given the extent to which HIV/AIDS is ravaging the population," he said.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will repatriate refugees from neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) using the Oubangui river which, besides serving as the border between the two countries, has been closed to human traffic since September, a senior UNHCR official said on Monday.

The UN refugee agency has evacuated its non-essential staff from western Ethiopia after violence that left an estimated 30 people dead and dozens injured. UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said the local hospital had been “overwhelmed” after a weekend of fighting in Gambella, 800 km west of Addis Ababa.

Down a steep hill, on the edge of the deep green forest that encircles this village in Central Ghana, a man with a strange growth on his upper arm lies on a wooden bench in great pain. Mary Agykpomaa, a local healer, has just cut a hole in his shoulder and another one in his chest. Now she's squirting a strange potion into one hole and watching it ooze out of the other. Meanwhile, Osei Darkwa, a genial 43-year old man with a slight paunch and vast ambitions, is strolling around, taking pictures of the patients with his digital camera. Soon he'll upload them to his webpage, complete with Java scripts, Flash animation, and a soundtrack of African drummers. "I want the world to know her," he says.

Whew! Thank you. Have scrolled and browsed accordingly. So much happening on the continent. However, I was struck by the absence of newsbites on the Sudan, Ghana, Lesotho and Botswana. PZ REPLIES: Thanks for the email - I hope that you have subsequently found stories in the areas you mention. We do our best, but can't cover every single country every single week.

I find your newsletter most informative. Congratulations.

A proposed hydropower project at Karuma falls was inflated by $200 million. Norpak, a Norwegian company, is developing the Karuma project. Karuma is competing with Bujagali for World Bank's approval. Subsequently, the World Bank lined up Bujagali - which is now dogged by bribery allegations.

The book focuses on how the media covered the 2002 Presidential and Mayoral elections. It depicts the struggle to suffocate the truth and the efforts by the private media to get it heard. This translated to a media war- and ultimately Zimbabweans witnessed a monumental battle by Government to coerce the electorate to vote for the ruling party. An informed electorate will not vote for corrupt and incompetent government- and certainly not for one that undermines their constitutional rights. At the time of the 2002 elections the crisis afflicting the national economy was a source of increasing hardship for most of the population, politically motivated state sanctioned violence became a plague across the nation, and laws guaranteeing democratic practice were trampled underfoot by a government determined to retain control of power. Please send orders and enquiries to the Project Coordinator, MMPZ, 15 Duthie Avenue, Alexandra Park, Harare, Tel/fax: +263 4 703702, E-mail: [email]monitors@mweb.co.zw

The illegal gains allegedly generated by Goldenberg International could have paid for universal primary education in Kenya for a decade. So one expert witness claimed at a public inquiry that has driven home to Kenyans the price they have paid for mismanagement. Goldenberg was set up at the turn of the 1990s, allegedly as a vehicle to access pre-shipment financing and state compensation for gold and jewellery exports.

Host communities blame refugees for the spread of HIV/AIDS, according to a survey by the UNHCR. "Such sentiments are held not only by local people, but by politicians, some media and even humanitarian workers," said the UNHCR commissioner, also noting the direct correlation between the increase in the number of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa, and hostility towards refugees. However, evidence suggests that HIV infection rates among refugees are lower than those in host communities.

At Cancun, developing countries were better able to organise themselves and articulate their interests, but the question on how to proceed on various issues in open. The proposals from all sides should reflect what is in the best interests of development of developing countries. This paper from the Third World Network examines key issues after Cancun. "We should not be distracted by the blame game as to who caused Cancun to fail, and not be affected by any hints or accusations that developing countries were responsible and will now suffer for it. What is important is to examine what are the best options on substantive and process issues that will be in the interest of developing countries and to put these positions forward."

Corruption does not only mean the illegal looting of public funds. It can also include exorbitant salaries paid to the political leadership and the civil service, argues Dagi Kimani from The East African in an article for World Press Review. "As Kenyans this year launch a concerted war against corruption, which in governance is taken basically to mean the privatisation of public funds through illegal means, they will also have to fight extremely hard to stop the looting of public coffers in legal ways. This must be so because, in what looks like a conspiracy by the top echelons of the political leadership and the civil service, the salaries of top public servants are being pushed to obscene levels, even as lower cadres are perennially told that the exchequer does not have enough tax shillings to throw them a lifeline of single-digit percentage wage increase," the article says.