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Some 300 members of Brazil's Landless Peasants' Movement (MST) took over an estate belonging to an associate of the country's president in the state of Sao Paulo Monday, organization spokesmen said.

By the end of the year, Starbucks will increase its ever-growing empire by opening a coffee shop in Mexico City -- the first Starbucks in Latin America. Ironically, Starbucks will soon be selling gourmet coffee to the very people who are under-paid for harvesting coffee beans. News of the Mexico City shop came as Starbucks was presenting its first Corporate Social Responsibility report at its annual shareholders' meeting in Seattle last month. The report emphasized the company's claimed commitment to doing business in socially, economically and environmentally responsible ways, to benefit the communities around the world where it does business.

Central America is in the grip of famine, and if President Bush mentions it when he visits El Salvador on Sunday, he will likely suggest that free trade is the solution. Yet Bush's proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement is hardly going to remedy the worsening disaster in rural Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.Unregulated markets are a large part of the reason why 700,000 Central Americans face starvation and nearly 1million more suffer serious food shortages.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Just 20 electric utilities in the United States are responsible for half the carbon dioxide, mercury, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide pollution emitted by the 100 largest power generating companies in the nation, a new report finds. The study by a coalition of environmental and public interest groups found that between four and six companies account for 25 percent of the emissions of each pollutant.

Columbia University announces the 2002 launch of the Reuters Forum, a unique and popular course offered by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism from January 30 through May 8. The forum is open to the public. During the semester, leading experts on global trade and commerce, anti-terrorism and national security, and the economic gap between rich and poor nations will gather in ''open'' forums to debate the future of globalization, post-Sept. 11. The general public is encouraged to attend and participate during these sessions, free of charge.

In a recent New York Times article, TIAA-CREF's CEO John H. Biggs said he would support the creation of a new retirement fund that would employ not only negative screens (avoiding certain companies), but also positive screens (investing in companies strong on social responsibility).

Mexican farmers say their crops are contaminated by GM corn. At stake: their harvest, native seeds and very livelihood.

The second annual skills training for corporate campaigners, a project of the Corporate Campaign Working Group* -- environmental, human rights and labor organizations working together to challenge corporate power and demand accountability.

Even as world leaders kicked off discussions on how to alleviate poverty a theme anti-globalization activists have pushed for years a motley crew of corn farmers, masked students and rebel supporters took to the streets denouncing the gathering as more of the same.

One of the poorest towns in Mexico, El Porvenir last year signed a sister-city agreement with one of the richest, San Pedro Garza Garcia, on the outskirts of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon state. The pact signed last August with President Vicente Fox on hand was meant to be a model for a new vision of fighting poverty: an exchange of products, help with schooling and technical training, new investment for a town where fewer than one in five homes has electricity.