A subsidiary of one of the world's largest commodity trading companies stands accused of a series of tax irregularities in Zambia - a desperately poor developing country where life expectancy is 47 and tax revenues are urgently needed. According to a leaked auditors' report, the copper and cobalt mining company Mopani Copper Mines Plc may be using derivatives trades to shift profits out of Zambia in order to minimise its tax bill in the country. Swiss giant Glencore International AG has a 73 per cent interest in Mopani through one of its subsidiaries.

On 3 February 2011, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services (MIBS) Lieutenant General Ronnie Shikapwasha said government would not re-open Radio Lymabai in Mongu until investigations into its alleged involvement in the broadcast of seditious materials regarding the Barotseland controversy were completed. On 14 January 2011, Radio Lyambai was forced off air when police confiscated equipment that enables the station to be on air.

Since the discovery of copper deposits in Zambia during the 1930s, copper has spelled both doom and boom for the country’s social, political and economic activities. This paper looks at the current mining contracts (development agreements as they are officially called) entered into between the Government of the Republic Zambia (GRZ) and the different mining companies working in Zambia. The assumptions on which the bargaining theory is based are questioned in the light of the evidence emerging from the Zambian situation.

Government has launched the Gender Responsive Budget Programme which seeks to ensure equality in the budgetary process. The project, which is in conjunction with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) will incorporate four main areas of activities. The activities are gender citizen report cards, budget tracking from the gender perspective, budget statements and gender-aware policy appraisals.

High poverty levels and the skewed distribution of resources in Zambia's poorest province is stirring secession talk - with an ethnic dimension. 'The tensions in Western Province are a consequence of the neglect that the place has suffered in terms of socio-economic and infrastructure development,' Thomas Mabwe, head of Development Studies at the Zambia Open University, told IRIN. 'Poverty levels in Western Province are the highest in the country, and there is very little to show in terms of infrastructure development. So, to some extent, people are just reacting to that under-development of their region,' he said.

Relative calm returned to western Zambia Saturday though under heavy police patrols after Friday’s bloody protests left two people killed and nine wounded as activists pressed for secession of the region. Police shot dead two youths in an effort to crush Barotseland activists who wanted to hold a rally at Limulunga royal village in Mongu – about 600 kilometres west of the capital Lusaka – to discuss secession of the province.

At an increased risk of HIV and often unable to negotiate safe sex with clients, sex workers have been a major focus in HIV prevention and treatment. However, away from the streets and brothels, their children have been largely ignored. Now a small but growing body of research has suggested that the children of sex workers face a range of HIV risks including early sexual debut, low school enrolment, parental abandonment and psychological issues, including social marginalisation, related to their mothers' work, according to Jennifer Beard, assistant Professor in the Department of International Health at the Boston University School of Public Health.

In Zambia, a silver lining has emerged for widespread rural hunger and poverty, thanks to homegrown agricultural research. Local scientists have successfully developed four new, early-maturing and high- yielding cassava cultivars in an ambitious research project conducted in the cassava-rich Luapula Province, under the on-going Root and Tuber Improvement Programme (RTIP).

To many people Facebook is a tool to announce what they are doing or what they have done, yet to some Zambians, it is being used as ‘Agony Aunt’ from which they are seeking advice on many social problems affecting them, reports Global Voices. A social work graduate from the University of Zambia, Tina Banda, started a Facebook page called Real Life and Hot Issues Discussion Forum with Tina Banda on which a number of topics are posted everyday and responses given by other Facebook users.

Government has dismissed predictions that this year’s general elections would be the bloodiest ever, describing the prophecy as an attempt to threaten peace and security. And Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP) has described the statement from Colonel Panji Kaunda as irresponsible and alarming. Kaunda was on 3 January quoted saying Zambia will experience bloody violence if Government does not put measures in place to stop it.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed concern that Zambian President Rupiah Banda invited indicted Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to participate in a regional conference scheduled for 15 December. Group spokesman Reed Brody said a majority of human rights groups across Africa have expressed displeasure over the invitation. 'We are hoping that this report is not correct and, if it is, we are hoping that the president of Zambia will eventually think better of it.'

A Saudi Arabian investor plans to invest in a 5,000 hectare farm and a fruit-processing plant in Zambia, the African country’s Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane said. The contract will be signed in the next three months for the land, which will be leased, Musokotwane told reporters in Riyadh at a conference today. He didn’t identify the Saudi investor.

A thousand babies are infected with HIV every day - in pregnancy, during birth and through breastfeeding. Close to 400,000 African children are infected with HIV every year. The situation points back to the high HIV prevalence amongst women of reproductive age, especially in Southern Africa. Zambia is one of the countries recognised for making progress in addressing the problem.?? Seventy thousand Zambian women between the ages of 15 and 40 have HIV; the health ministry says 85 thousand children are living with the virus.

Ministers and heads of African states refused to pass a draft declaration on climate change at the Africa-EU summit, it is said. Participating ministers refused to pass the draft Joint Africa- EU Declaration on Climate Change because it only showed the EU position rather than the African countries’ stance, Ahmed Abul Gheit said after a ministerial meeting in the Libyan capital of Tripoli last Sunday.

September 2010 cast a dark cloud over Zambia’s chances of ending gender-based violence in the country when two political leaders beat up their wives. Early September, Opposition Patriotic Front (PF) Member of Parliament for Kasama Central and prominent Lusaka businessman, Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba, beat up his wife after a dispute at their residence in Lusaka. About two weeks later, Livingstone District Commissioner Francis Chika also assaulted his wife after a domestic argument. Both incidents were widely reported in the Zambian media.

Zambia has been named among several countries in Africa that have failed to account for about US$13 million believed to have been misapplied and embezzled under the Global Fund. According to media reports, citing the November 2010 edition of the Global Fund report, Zambia is on the list together with Cameroun, Mauritania and Mali that are said to have misapplied in excess of US$25 million meant for assistance to the health sector.

A Zambia ruling Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) politician has been jailed for assaulting journalists who had gone to cover President Rupiah Banda at the Lusaka International Airport last July. Lusaka Province MMD youth chairman Chris Chalwe was convicted on 9 November by the Lusaka Magistrates Court which found him guilty of assaulting journalists from state-owned Times of Zambia and the privately-owned the Post newspaper when they went to cover President Rupiah Banda at the Lusaka International Airport.

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), a Geneva-based international housing rights watchdog, has released a 'report card' examining the impact of Zambia’s land reform processes on women. The report, 'The Impact of National Land Policy and Land Reform on Women in Zambia', was released together with the Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA), a joint initiative of organisations dedicated to improving women's land and housing rights in Africa. The key finding in the report is that Zambian women’s enjoyment of land rights in both rural and urban areas is hampered by male-dominated structures and patriarchal decision-making mechanisms.

Zambia has fared badly in the Open Budget Survey (OBS) coming out second from the bottom of 94 countries that were surveyed. Presenting the findings of the OBS, Economic Association of Zambia (EAZ) executive director Alexander Chileshe said Zambia ranked among the bottom two that failed to uphold transparency and accountability for their national budgets. He observed that Zambia did not give room for citizens and even parliament to have a say on how the budget was being implemented.

Zambia's efforts to strengthen its education system will come to little if no way is found to retain skilled teachers like Caroline Chisenga. She is a maths teacher with ten years of experience under her belt. She has recently upgraded her teaching qualifications with a full degree. But she has one eye on leaving the country in search of higher pay.