CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world, will slide deeper into poverty over the next decade despite a bold economic recovery plan, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The independent South African Institute of Race Relations’ (SAIRR) annual report estimates that the region, ravaged by an HIV/AIDS pandemic, will account for half the world’s poor by 2015 — up from 27 percent in 1999.

“Despite the efforts of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and the African Union … Africa will get significantly poorer during a time period that will see global poverty reduced by a third,” the SAIRR said.

Nepad is an African initiative aimed at improving governance to help attract billions of dollars in aid and investment to the continent. Corruption, wars and poor governance have been blamed for the continent’s inability to attract significant financial support from rich nations.

The study predicted that the number of people living on less than a dollar a day globally would fall to 810 million from 1.17 billion by 2015.

“In sub-Saharan Africa the opposite will happen. From 241 million people living on less than a dollar a day in 1990 that figure increased to 315 million in 1999 and is set to reach over 400 million by 2015,” it said.

The study also found that spending on healthcare had declined by 4.8 percent in real terms in South Africa between 1996 and 2003, and that the mortality rate for children under five years of age had risen by 63.9 percent between 1998 and 2002.

The SAIRR said the proportion of tuberculosis cases recorded in the country that were also HIV positive related increased from 23.4 percent in 1995 to 62 percent in 2003.

South Africa has the highest caseload of HIV/AIDS in the world with one in nine people estimated to be infected with the virus that causes AIDS, according to government statistics.

Neighboring countries are facing similar or higher rates of infection.

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CLAMART, France (Reuters) – French doctors said on Tuesday Yasser Arafat was responding to treatment and ruled out leukemia, though aides said the Palestinian leader could remain in a French military hospital for several more weeks.

Arafat was well enough to follow the U.S. presidential election and had taken calls from heads of state and senior Palestinian officials, said aides in the southwestern Paris suburb where the 75-year-old leader is being treated.

Initial tests “confirmed the abnormal blood count, high white blood cell count and low platelet count and ruled out a diagnosis of leukemia,” Palestinian envoy to Paris Leila Shahid said in a statement read to journalists.

The statement, drawn up by doctors at the Percy military hospital and approved by Arafat, was the first by the hospital since his admission and broadly confirmed aides’ comments.

It said there had been a “general improvement” in his condition over his first three days in hospital, which allowed doctors to perform more tests.

“Pathology tests have shown an improvement in his white blood cell count and persistent abnormalities in some biological constants concerning the digestive function,” the statement said.

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BANGKOK (Reuters) – Suspected Muslim militants beheaded a Buddhist village leader in southern Thailand in revenge for the deaths of 85 protesters last week and left the head and trunk two miles apart, officials said on Tuesday.

Local people found the head of a 58-year-old deputy village chief in a fertilizer bag on a road in Narathiwat province with a hand-written note saying the beheading was in revenge for the deaths of Muslim protesters in army custody, officials said.

“A revenge for the innocents of Tak Bai district,” an official quoted the note as saying in reference to the place where seven protesters were killed and 78 suffocated or were crushed in army trucks after their arrest.

The trunk of Ran Tulae was found on the same road two miles away an hour after the head was found, the official said.

Ran was the second Buddhist to be decapitated since violence erupted in Thailand’s largely Muslim south in January. In May, a 67-year-old rubber tapper was beheaded at his plantation in Narathiwat.

The decapitation was the latest incident in 10 months of violence in the south near the Malaysian border in which nearly 450 people have been killed and the first murder linked directly to revenge for the deaths of the protesters.

Islamic leaders and analysts had predicted Muslim outrage would trigger reprisals.

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by Larry Rohter
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Nov. 1 – After a 33-year struggle, the left has finally gained power here. But if the experience of a neighboring country like Brazil is any guide, Tabaré Vázquez and his Broad Front, narrow winners in the election on Sunday, are more likely to tinker around the edges of Uruguay’s problems than carry out the profound social transformation they have been promising.

Dr. Vázquez’s coalition is a rather ungainly beast, ranging from Communists to Christian Democrats, and he has sought to keep its various components happy with declarations that can be interpreted in many different ways. But his victory has awakened expectations of immediate change that are likely to be fanned by those on the left, which includes former Tupamaro guerrillas.

At the same time, Dr. Vázquez lacks the financial resources he needs to fulfill those promises, which in turn constrains his political maneuverability. So what will he turn out to be: an unpredictable populist like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, or a fiscal disciplinarian like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil?

“As they say at bullfights, this is the hour of truth,” said Luis Eduardo González, a pollster and prominent political commentator. “There has been a lot of dubious rhetoric” about a social revolution, he said, but if Dr. Vázquez and other Front leaders knuckle under to the harsh realities facing this country of 3.5 million, “they will have to deny their own past history.”

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by Juan Forero
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Oct. 31 – Allies of the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, were expected to sweep crucial posts in nationwide regional elections on Sunday.

Political analysts, pollsters and some opposition leaders have been predicting for weeks that the opposition would lose as many as 100 mayoral posts, including the one in the capital, Caracas, and as many as five governorships. Pro-Chávez governors already control 15 of 23 states, while opposition or independent mayors run 200 of 337 municipalities. The vote includes state assembly seats.

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