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The world has moved backward on environment and development since Rio. Governments surely bear primary responsibility for this failure. However, global corporations are at the root of many of the most intractable problems and have hamstrung governments preparing for Earth Summit II in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Bush's Corporate Responsibility plan is pretty anemic -- not what you'd expect from a president desperate to keep the current crisis from becoming a major political liability.

Over the 4th of July weekend, stories about Bush's questionable behavior as an executive of Harken Energy became grist for the weekend talk shows. With today's Wall Street policy speech looming, the President and his men hoped that addressing the inevitable press questions about Harken the day before would take the steam out of the issue today.

For President Bush to pretend to be shocked that some of the nation's top executives deal from a stacked deck is akin to a madam feigning surprise that sexual favors have been sold in her establishment. Dubya may have gaps in his education, but ignorance of ''aggressive accounting'' techniques and other scams they don't teach in Biz 101 is not one of them.

Big business, whose lust for profit is seen as anathema to sustainable development, must contribute to next month's global summit on poverty and the environment, the man leading corporate interests there said.

Here is one of the most remarkable aspects of the still-unfolding financial scandals swirling around Worldcom, Xerox, Global Crossing, Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco and a growing number of other companies: The fraud occurred in the most heavily regulated and monitored area of corporate activity

Of late, there has been much discussion of corruption in the public sector of many developing countries. It was inevitable corruption of public servants that, in part, made it important to privatize in developing countries. Advocates of privatization also lauded the private sector's ability to compete. But I'm not sure these private sector advocates quite had in mind the abilities that American corporate capitalism has demonstrated so amply recently: corruption on an almost unfathomable scale. They put to shame those petty government bureaucrats who stole a few thousand dollars or even a few million. The numbers bandied about in the Enron, WorldCom and other scandals are in the billions, greater than the GNP of many countries.

FRANKFURT -- U.S. computer giant Hewlett-Packard said on Wednesday it plans to cut 5,900 jobs in Europe from a total of 15,000 already announced worldwide, as part of its merger with Compaq Computer Corp.

Premiere showing of Fenceline, an awarding winning PBS documentary about the Cancer Alley community struggle may be viewed in San Francisco on July 11, 2002. There will also be an update on the World Summit on the Environment.

An internal Securities and Exchange Commission memo from 1991 says President Bush repeatedly failed to file timely reports of his business interests and transactions before his election as Texas governor.