SOUTH AFRICA

CAPE TOWN – In an interview, leading Aids activist and head of the Treatment Action Campaign Zackie Achmat claims that African nations are failing to control tuberculosis and could be overwhelmed by drug-resistant strains of the infectious lung disease, with dire implications for the war on HIV/Aids. "We need new TB vaccines, new TB testing and we need new TB medicines," stresses Achmat, as he and other activists prepare for a march that will champion a global call for a radical programme to attack TB. Spread through close personal contact, TB has long been a problem in Africa, where hundreds of millions of people are latent carriers. But its growing relationship with HIV has made treating both diseases more difficult in vulnerable populations.

AFRICA

ACCRA – Ghana's Foreign Minister, Akwasi Osei-Ajei, insists that the UK is an important partner of Africa and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown should attend the coming Europe-Africa summit even if Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is there. After meeting his Portuguese counterpart Luis Amado in Accra, the Ghanaian Foreign Minister is adamant that Brown's role is too big for him to skip the meeting over Mugabe.
"It is an individual choice, but I wish Mr. Brown would not carry out his threat to boycott the meeting because Britain is an important player not only in the European Union, but also a great partner to Africa," the Ghanaian minister says.

HARARE – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe signs a compromise Bill into law, giving him room to pick a successor. The Constitutional Amendment Bill, agreed between Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in September, allows Mugabe to choose a successor if he were to retire midterm by empowering Parliament, which is dominated by his party, to vote for a president. The constitutional changes stem from ongoing talks between the MDC and the government, which are being brokered by South African President Thabo Mbeki as part of a regional drive to resolve Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis. The MDC has said it will keep pressuring the government to change the constitution and repeal tough security and media laws.

WORLD

PARIS – French President Nicolas Sarkozy wins a mixture of sneers and cheers for dashing to Chad and picking up seven Europeans embroiled in a child kidnapping case. Critics are accusing the hyperactive French leader of looking to cash in on a scandal that has strained France's ties with Chad, while fans say he has pulled off a diplomatic coup, helping shore up relations with a long-standing African ally. Sarkozy flew to Chad to collect three French journalists and four Spanish flight attendants who had been arrested last month along with a group of self-proclaimed relief workers on a mission to airlift 103 African children to Europe.

BRUSSELS – Europe's trade chief accuses Nigeria and South Africa of trying to block negotiations for new trade and investment deals between the European Union and scores of former colonies.
The EU wants to sign new Economic Partnership Agreements with nearly 80 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries before December 31, when existing preferential trade rules expire. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has deemed those rules illegal.
The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States, which includes oil-exporting heavyweight Nigeria, has rejected the EU call for new interim commercial deals by year's end, and demanded an extension of the WTO waiver.

NEW YORK – The United Nations (UN) launches a new website powered by Google and network equipment maker Cisco that will show how and where the world is succeeding or failing in meeting the Millennium Development Goals on ending poverty. UN officials and outside experts have warned that achieving the goals set in 2000 by the target date of 2015 is looking increasingly difficult. The creators of the website, http://www.mdgmonitor.org/, are confident that better monitoring of progress will spur success. This is not Google's first humanitarian project. It joined with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in April to launch detailed maps and information on the Google Earth website about the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region.