"Land ownership remains racially skewed"

Obasanjo calls for proof over Liberia charges
The international community must provide irrefutable proof that former Liberian President Charles Taylor has committed any wrong while living in exile in Nigeria, President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Wednesday.

Nigeria May Face Collapse Within Next 15 Years, U.S. Study Says
Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, faces an "outright collapse" within the next 15 years that may be sparked by a coup d'etat by junior military officers, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Council.

UN to check on Zimbabwe food crisis
A special United Nations envoy is to visit Zimbabwe this week to assess the country's critical food situation.

WHO's Numbers Don't Add Up
THE 58th Annual World Health Assembly began last week in Geneva, the headquarters of the World Health Organisation (WHO). The killers of malaria and HIV/AIDS, and the fact that half the world does not have access to essential medicines, should not just be on the agenda, but should dominate it.

Ghana Commended
Ghana has been commended for being the first country to be reviewed under the African Peer Review Mechanism Process (APRMP) of the NEPAD initiative.

Southern Africa: Aids Crisis Meeting Announced By UN
The impact of HIV/AIDS on southern Africa will take centre stage this week at a special UN meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Scottish 'mining for nurses punishes Malawi'
MOTHERS-TO-BE in Malawi face a healthcare system rapidly heading back towards the same standard as in medieval Scotland, and much of the blame is being placed on the NHS for recruiting midwives and nurses to fill British skill shortages.

Flagship Africa scheme collapses
A flagship water privatisation scheme for Africa has collapsed amid claims that the British company involved has failed to improve the supply for millions of people. Tanzania's government yesterday confirmed it had cancelled its deal with Biwater, which was contracted two years ago to bring clean water to the capital Dar es Salaam and the surrounding region within five years by installing new pipes.

South Africa waives death penalty for 62
South Africa's Constitutional Court today waived the death sentence for 62 prisoners condemned before capital punishment was abolished in 1995, saying it should be replaced by an alternative sentence to end 10 years of legal limbo.

SOUTH AFRICA: Land ownership remains racially skewed
Eleven years into democratic rule, South Africa's white minority population still controls most of the productive agricultural land, government officials acknowledged earlier this week.

Venezuela: building a social model
that avoids the Marxist errors of the past

Ghana marks AU Day
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and current Chairman of the African Union (AU) on Wednesday appealed for peace in conflict areas in Africa, saying: "We cannot achieve the desired progress if there is no peace and stability."

Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record
The National Security Archive today posted additional documents that show that the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner.

A breath of fresh air sweeps into Hell,
but there's still no way out
Like a refreshing breeze blowing briefly over those damned to endure the hell created by America's government came the words of British M.P. George Galloway to an American Senate Committee. The man was simply magnificent. Tough, brave, and articulate—hurling unanswerable truth at blubbering political lowlifes in silk suits.

Washington is the most dishonest place on earth, and with that fact goes another, that the American people are among the earth's worst governed. These creepy American Gauleiters had wronged Galloway with faked accusations of his profiting from oil trading with Saddam Hussein. My God, it's just one filthy lie after another. They tried smearing Kofi Anan with the same kind of stuff.

Brazilian daily reports multinationals
aided Latin American death squads
Major US and European corporations collaborated intimately with Latin American military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s, fingering militant workers for arrest, torture and often death, according to an article that appeared this week in the Brazilian daily O Globo.

US Senator humiliates Arab "leaders" to their faces
A US senator has dispensed bitter pills to Arab leaders, pointing out that the United States is not ready to risk the prestige needed to create a Palestinian state.

Relatives of youngest Palestinian inmate
in Israeli jails appeal for saving her life
Relatives of the 14-year-old Hibatallah Ishaq, resident of Al-Khalil, who is the youngest Palestinian female inmate locked up in Israeli prisons, called upon the concerned human rights watchdogs to save their daughter's life.

Michael Isikoff: Government News Source Junkie
"It was terrible what happened," Michael Isikoff, spineless journalist for Newsweek, told Charlie Rose. "Even if it was just a little bit that we contributed to the violence that went on over there, that was awful, terrible." No, Isikoff wasn't talking about the "violence that went on" in Iraq and Afghanistan, so far resulting in the murder of more than 100,000 people, but rather the mistake he made in telling the truth about what goes on every day in places like Guantanamo Bay, Bagram AFB, Camp Cropper, and other dismal facilities within Bush's torture and sexual humiliation gulag.

China told by US to revalue renminbi by 10%
The US Treasury has told the Chinese authorities that they must revalue their currency by at least 10 per cent against the dollar to prevent protectionist legislation in the US congress.

Indigenous Leaders Say World Bank Should Take Its Own Advice
The World Bank should follow its own advice and modify its policies and prescriptions for Latin America, indigenous leaders told IPS.