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According to the report, thousands of villagers in eastern and central India received no compensation after state-owned Coal India used a $530 million loan from the World Bank in 1997 to raze their homes in a coal mine modernization scheme. Although resettling, compensating and retraining farmers as entrepreneurs was part of the loan deal, Coal India had no experience in these activities and was unable to carry them out.

To put it mildly, the U'wa are a touchy issue for Gore. The presidential candidate owns between $500,000 and $1 million in Occidental stock and his father, Al Gore Sr., served as chair of the board for 28 years, earning an annual salary of $500,000. The elder Gore was such a close political ally of the company that Armand Hammer, Occidental's founder and CEO, liked to say that he had Gore ''in my back pocket.''

While Democrats will be partying all across Tinseltown this week, these events go far beyond typical convention-week soirees. Each is aimed at the Democrat who would take over a key committee if the party managed to regain control of Congress in the November elections.

Activists organized protests against corporate greed, oil company abuses and the lack of campaign finance reform to mark Monday's opening of the Democratic National Convention.

Monday is the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where thousands of environmental, human rights, labor and campaign finance reform advocates will gather both in the streets and at the Shadow Convention hosted by Arianna Huffington. We of Rainforest are not gathering to show our support for the Democratic Party.

At the UN meeting, the leaders of corporations well known for running sweatshops, engendering environmental disaster and colluding in human rights violations sat at the table with Mr. Annan. They agreed to adhere to and publicly promote the Global Compact's nine core principles of universally accepted labor, environmental and human rights values.

A meeting of Reform Party leaders in Long Beach erupted in chaos Tuesday, with screaming, shoving matches, a walkout by loyalists to party founder Ross Perot and a declaration that social conservative Pat Buchanan is now guaranteed the fractured party's presidential nomination.

An analysis of campaign-finance records released yesterday by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics also showed that Lieberman has received more contributions this election cycle from insurance companies than any other senator.

MEXICO CITY -- The GOP's vice-presidential hopeful Dick Cheney once claimed that it was a damned shame the ''good lord'' didn't put the earth's most abundant oil reserves in democratic countries.

FBI chief Louis Freeh met with Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross to finalize arrangements and discuss an agenda for the joint US-Czech project, which is to include at least one agent and an administrative force. Although the training and intelligence gathering center is supposed to be fighting organized crime, the Central and Eastern European Review reports that one of the ''main topics of discussion during Freeh's visit was the upcoming joint IMF/World Bank annual meeting in Prague in September.''