Key players in the fight against Aids met recently, ostensibly to develop a strategy against the disease. However, sources said the suspension of Dr Margaret Gachara as the director of the National Aids Control Council, took the centre stage. Against the backdrop of massive corruption in the council, critics claim Kenya is facing defeat in the anti-Aids battle. Public outrage is only complementing widespread disquiet among donors over the council.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Kingdom Government have embarked on a resettlement programme that will enable some West Africans in need of special protection to reside in Britain. The first group is likely to include Liberians who fled to Sierra Leone during the 1989-90 civil war, according to UNHCR. A small number of refugees are expected to arrive in October, with the possibility of the number rising to 500 in 2004 if the pilot scheme proves a success.

I saw your announcement asking for letters in support of Amina Lawal. After previous campaigns to secure letters were launched, a very compelling response from some Nigerian women suggested that its impact was more negative than positive. You can read their letter at http://www.counterpunch.org/iman05152003.html Thank you for your very important work at disseminating information on Africa.

The Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy intends to publish in volume 7, early in 2004, a special issue on a variety of legal and policy issues that have arisen in Africa, where concerns about and programs for biodiversity conservation, livelihoods, and development intersect. Authors from a variety of scholarly disciplines are invited to submit proposals for papers. The Journal, now to be published by Taylor and Francis, reaches a diverse international audience of scholars, managers, and others with biodiversity conservation and sustainable development interests in international groups and institutions.

"Curious" events in the bidding for South Africa's arms deal that might have involved President Thabo Mbeki still need to be probed, politician Patricia de Lille said on Wednesday. This related to an about-turn in the short-listing of bidders for four navy corvettes and three submarines, she told the National Press Club in Pretoria.

I am writing this note to introduce to you a newly established media institution - Addis Alem Press (literally meaning "the new vision press"). It is a private media agency formed by a group of veteran and young journalists of diverse experience in journalism, public relations and the audiovisual profession.

The Mauritanian government's harassment of opposition figures undermines any chance of free and fair elections, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the Mauritanian president this week. From late April, Mauritanian security forces arrested dozens of religious leaders, opposition politicians and social activists, allegedly in a campaign to crack down on terrorist movements in Mauritania.

The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions asked the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday to postpone the hearing of an urgent application by Deputy President Jacob Zuma to get access to a letter allegedly implicating him in trying to solicit a bribe.

The United Nations Relief and Recovery Unit (RRU) in Zimbabwe has been forced to close its provincial field offices, which coordinate and monitor the use of donor-funded humanitarian aid. In the latest Zimbabwe Humanitarian Situation Report released this week, the RRU said the government had requested that its "field offices be closed from mid-August". "The government of Zimbabwe's position is that not all procedures for the establishment of this field presence had been properly followed.”

The UN has warned that despite improvements on the political front, an "acute humanitarian crisis" remains in the Pool region of southern Republic of Congo following a year of hostilities that ended in March 2003. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Tuesday that several inter-agency humanitarian assessment missions to the region between May and August revealed that infrastructure had been completely destroyed, sanitation was seriously lacking, the health and nutritional situation was "of grave concern", and children, in particular, were dying of acute malnutrition.

The nearly six-decade-record of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank is marked by one colossal failure after another. Over the last three decades, the institutions have exerted decisive influence over the shape of economic policy-making in most of the Global South. And with greater power has come even greater failure. Following the directives of the IMF and World Bank, country after country in the Global South has seen economic growth rates slowed, or even reversed, unemployment skyrocket, inequality rise, rural economies collapse and urban slums mushroom. Governments have cut spending on education and healthcare. Service delivery has worsened. Control of the commanding heights of Global South economies has transferred from public hands to foreign multinationals or narrow bands of domestic elites, with corrupt deals often facilitating the giveaway of public property to private hands.

Kenya's AIDS NGOs are hoping that recent allegations of corruption and misappropriation in Kenya's National AIDS Control Council (NACC) will not affect the country's AIDS programmes and funding. The council's director, Dr Margaret Gachara, was suspended after she obtained an inflated salary by "improper" means, NACC spokesman Kassim Mambo, told PlusNews. The country's HIV/AIDS coordinating body is also under investigation after being accused of mishandling money.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says it was not informed of an operation to relocate Sudanese refugees from a camp in western Uganda to another one further north, close to the Sudanese border. Scuffles broke out at the Kiryandongo camp in Masindi district in the early hours of Monday morning when the local authorities started forcibly loading the refugees onto trucks.

Embezzlement of public funds has continued unabated under President Mwanawasa's administration, Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) has observed. Launching the 2002 state of corruption report on Wednesday, TIZ board member Leonard Kalinde said they were concerned at revelations of ongoing misapplication of government resources meant for national development.

Overwhelmed by complaints of failed water projects due to official corruption, the African Development Bank (ADB) has announced the cancellation of 80 per cent of its projects in the country.

The government in Djibouti has extended the deadline for the departure of illegal immigrants from the East African country, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been struggling to cope with thousands of people who thronged a transit centre in a last bid to apply for asylum and legalize their stay.

A leading election monitoring group has called for politicians to rein in their supporters after clashes between ruling Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) and opposition militants in Zambia's North Western and Western provinces ahead of two by-elections this month. Alfred Chanda, head of the Foundation for a Democratic Process (FODEP), told IRIN on Tuesday: "We as FODEP and other election monitoring groups are hopeful that the violence will not continue until election day, but looking at the issue realistically, the violence is likely to continue."

The top United Nations (UN) human rights envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has called for the creation of a tribunal of national and international judges to try abuses committed in the country. "It is time to end impunity," UN special rapporteur Iulia Motoc told reporters in Bunia this weekend in the DRC's troubled northeastern Ituri province.

In a week of fire and fury at the allegations of corruption levelled against Deputy President Jacob Zuma, national attention has focused inward - will he go, or won't he, did he do it or didn't he? But a crucial part of the debate has received only scant attention: the share of guilt of those who pay the bribe, as opposed to those who receive it. In Zuma's case, French multinational arms company Thales was the alleged corrupter. In the Tony Yengeni case, it was allegedly DaimlerChrysler sister company Eads. In South Africa, the focus has not been there, but tiny Lesotho may show the way.

The position is based at the CABI Africa Regional Centre in Nairobi, which works in 6 thematic areas: rural knowledge systems, smallholder commodity chains, sustainable pest management, alien invasive species, conservation and utilisation of biodiversity, and information & communication technologies.