The World Bank dips a $1bn-a-year toe in the water of Cash on Delivery aid, with its new Programme for Results (which rather begs the question what are the other programmes for……)
“[Gibson Dunn Crutcher] immediately went on the offensive, beginning a tireless campaign to unearth evidence to try to discredit the plaintiffs and exonerate their client.” American Lawyer magazine explains why it named Gibson its top litigation department of the year. The client in question is oil giant Texaco-Chevron; those pesky plaintiffs are 30,000 Amazonian residents who have been living among Texaco-Chevron’s waste for 40 years and are now trying to take Chevron to court. The US is just a different place. Oxfam’s Chris Jochnick updates on the Chevron case. Texaco-Chevron has 39 different law firms working on the case.
Progress on the Uganda land grab covered previously. At the request of the grabbed communities, the World Bank’s Office of the Compliance Adviser/Ombudsman(CAO) has announced it will launch an independent investigation.
Deborah Brautigam destroys the China-in-Africa bit of an Economist survey of ‘state capitalism’
‘On average, Africa has managed to raise an estimated $441 in taxes per person per year while receiving $41 per person annually in aid’ – that’s got to be good news.
Oh dear, I think I’m about to get into trouble again, but ‘sxxx ex pat aid workers say’ is worth it. Just for the record, I have never met anyone who resembles either of these two…….
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