This media guide aims at helping business journalists report on corporate governance and raise public awareness of the impact it has on businesses, shareholders, and the broader community of stakeholders. It will help journalists develop clear and compelling stories that examine how a company is governed. It was produced by IFC’s Global Corporate Governance Forum in partnership with the International Center for Journalists, a an organization that advances quality journalism worldwide.

Four years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and its devastating fall-out, Transparency International looks at how weak oversight and a lack of transparency contributed to the financial crisis. 'This crisis was not just the result of a few rogue traders placing reckless bets. Corruption, in the form of fraud and a ‘no holds barred’ pursuit of profits, bonuses and growth, infected the whole financial system.' The page also has an interesting timeline of the crisis.

'Ocean grabbing' or aggressive industrial fishing by foreign fleets is a threat to food security in developing nations where governments should do more to promote local, small-scale fisheries, a study by a UN expert said. The report said emerging nations should tighten rules for access to their waters by an industrial fleet that is rapidly growing and includes vessels from China, Russia, the European Union, the United States and Japan.

At independence 50 years ago, Algeria inherited the oppressive cultural structures imposed by France. Today things are worse: the government allocates a meager budget to promote culture.

South Africa’s first census in a decade shows wealth disparities between race groups that persist 18 years after the end of apartheid. While incomes for black households increased an average 169 percent over 10 years, their annual earnings are 60,613 rand ($6,987), or a sixth of that for whites, Statistics South Africa said in a report released in Cape Town. About 80 percent of South Africa’s 51.8 million population is black.

According to an education for all global monitoring report published by Unesco in October, 71 million adolescents of lower secondary school age were out of school in 2010, with three out of four living in south and west Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The last of these regions has doubled the number of students enrolling over the period, yet has the world's lowest total secondary enrolment, at 40 per cent in 2010. Private schools have stepped in to plug the gap.

The more we live our lives online, the greater the temptation for governments and private companies to spy on us. News Editor Padraig Reidy highlights the dark side of our increasing dependence on digital communications. While the internet offers opportunities for mass communication and social interaction unprecedented in human history, the chances for governments to monitor and control how we communicate are also ample.

Adverse imbalances in international trade were exacerbating the impacts of the global economic and financial crisis, especially for developing countries, Algeria’s representative said today, as the Second Committee took up macroeconomic policy questions. Speaking on behalf of the 'Group of 77' developing countries and China, he said the turbulence in international trade was costly and disruptive, especially for least developed countries and African States. He described international trade as a 'vital tool' for long-term sustainable growth, emphasizing that developing countries should be spared from protectionist barriers, especially agricultural subsidies, and calling for the extension of trade-related technical and capacity-building assistance to them.

Former colonial powers continue to hold on to independent African nations through self-serving organizations such as La Francophonie. Africa does not need these neo-colonial networks.

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) denounces the Chamber of Mines in the way they have responded to the legitimate demands of mine workers.

The brave young Nigerian woman who survived abuse in the hands of her adoptive parents and later wrote a book about the experience speaks about moving on with her life. ('My Life Has a Price' by Tina Okpara, Amalion Publishing: Dakar, October 2012, ISBN 978-2-35926-016-8, 192 pages, Price: £13.95).

A response to the HI-Virus in two HIV positive women, which enabled them to make potent antibodies that would kill most of the HIV types from around the world, has provided South African reseachers with potential clues for the development of an AIDS vaccine. The study published on Sunday in the journal, Nature Medicine, describes how a unique change in the outer covering of the virus found in two HIV infected South African women enabled them to make potent antibodies which are able to kill up to 88% of HIV types from around the world. The discovery, described as 'groundbreaking' provides an important new approach that could be useful in making an AIDS vaccine, according to the researchers.

A research team at Oxford University in the UK is very close to determining the efficacy of their new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. If current clinical trials are successful, it will be the first new TB vaccine in almost a century. The urgent need for a new vaccine is emphasised by research showing that extensively drug-resistant (XDR) forms of the disease are rapidly spreading. Today, most babies in the world are immunized with the old Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, first used in 1921. The leader of the Oxford research team, Helen McShane, says it saves children's lives, but beyond infancy its effects are limited.

Ghana's National Coalition on Mining (NCOM) held its annual forum on 3 October 2012 at New Abirim in the country's eastern region. It was attended by an estimated 600 representatives of communities, mainly in the catchment area of the mine but also across the entire length and breadth of mining areas in Ghana. The forum took place just after citizens and farmers in the Chirano mining area presented a protest note to the Minister of Lands And Natural Resources. They demanded immediate payment of delayed compensation by Canada's Kinross Gold Corp, for the destruction of their cocoa trees seven years earlier.

The latest IMF World Economic Outlook is causing quite a stir, states this article. It contains a three page text box basically saying that the IMF, together with other international institutions such as the OECD and the European Commission, has heavily underestimated the impact of fiscal austerity on economic activity. By thinking that fiscal cuts would only have a relatively minor impact on economic activity, governments were given bad advice and were pushed into policies administering overdoses of austerity.

Some 154 million people were reportedly driven further into poverty in Southern countries as a result of speculation-induced food price hikes in 2007-08. What are the best strategies for bringing about the structural change needed that progressive activists can lend their support to? asks this Corner House report. The workshop presentation, while endorsing regulatory measures including banning certain investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds and vetting of derivative-based financial instruments, cautions against becoming focussed on regulation alone as an answer. Also crucial is the promotion of non-derivative, socially-based mechanisms to protect farmers and consumers from volatile food prices, as well as price interventions that do not pit Northern farmers against their Southern counterparts.

This Corner House briefing argues that the distinction between industrial tree plantations and biodiverse landscapes organized in conjunction with commons regimes is not just a distinction between various vegetable assemblages, but also a social/technical/political distinction. The slave-worked plantations of the past and the industrial plantations of today do not merely prop up colonialism; they are constituted by colonialism. Today's industrial plantations are also intertwined with overaccumulation, overproduction, financialization, and many other so-called 'social' things. Talking about 'sustainable' industrial eucalyptus or oil palm plantations is like talking about 'sustainable colonialism' or 'sustainable overaccumulation'.

Adolescent girls are not getting enough legal support to stop them falling prey to rights abuses, particularly sexual violence, according to legal advocacy group Equality Now. 'Legal systems around the world just don’t work for girls,' Yasmeen Hassan, global director of the New York-based organisation, told TrustLaw in an interview. Key legal obstacles include: girls’ ignorance of their rights or how to exercise them; the fear of stigma, not being believed or being blamed for abuse; further victimisation of girls by the justice system; and lack of tailored support services, says 'Learning from Cases of Girls’ Rights', a recent report from the Adolescent Girls’ Legal Defense Fund (AGLDF).

The annual World Bank meetings opened on 11 October in Tokyo. On the agenda: a sluggish global economic outlook marked by a Eurozone crisis and uncertainty in the US. And with the BRIC bloc failing in its reputation as motor of growth, fears grow over the fall out for Africa, says this article from Africa Report.

As mining projects in South Africa and Peru face violent opposition, critics are questioning the International Finance Corporation's (IFC) stakes in the companies at the centre of the controversies. IFC funds for mines in Mongolia and Guinea have also caused alarm, prompting renewed interest in the recommendations of the Extractive Industries Review.