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A primer on the development scheme that would turn southern Mexico and all of Central America into a giant export zone.

The Methanex Corporation, a Canadian chemical company, stumbled today in its attempt to sue the U.S. government for almost $1 billion over a crucial California clean water law. The Sierra Club welcomes the decision by a tribunal under the North America Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (NAFTA). But we are concerned that the narrow procedural ruling left the door open for future anti-environmental decisions by this tribunal or by NAFTA tribunals in other cases.

This travesty of a vote will be remembered as the Midsummer Nights Massacre, where growing popular concern about corporate-led globalization was shot down in favor of a backwards policy combining corporate managed trade and global deregulation of basic consumer, environmental and other public interest standards.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George W. Bush is on the verge of winning ''fast-track'' authority to negotiate new trade agreements, but at the expense of human rights and environmental protections, say die-hard critics.

Oxfam launches Make Trade Fair, a global campaign in 18 countries to change the rules of trade. It is accusing the rich world of robbing the poor world of $100 billion a year by abusing the rules governing world trade and denying millions of poor people their best escape route from poverty.

Americans consume almost 17 pounds of fresh tomatoes per person every year. It's a $1.4 billion industry. Most are grown in Florida and California but, thanks to a bilateral free trade agreement of 1988 and the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadian tomatoes now command more han 43% of the market, beating imports from Belgium and The Netherlands. But far from nourishing economic health and pleasing the business-oriented palate, this particular globalisation recipe is making a mess of the whole kitchen.

The only way to really describe the World Social Forum that just ended in Brazil is a global political ''carnaval.''

Activists at the second annual World Social Forum rejected the label ''anti,'' saying they were working for democracy and equitable distribution of wealth.

They're often portrayed as obstructionists to trade and the global economy. But the social movement that mobilized thousands in Quebec last month -- and earlier in Seattle and Prague -- is maturing beyond street protests.

In what one attorney called ''an end-run around the Constitution,'' corporations are using a little-known provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to challenge public laws, regulations and jury verdicts not only in the United States, but in Canada and Mexico as well. And they are arguing those cases not in courts of law, but before secret trade tribunals.

The Council of Canadians, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace are in court today to appeal a decision to exclude them from participating in a precedent-setting NAFTA dispute. The appeal highlights public concern that NAFTA tribunal's decisions can undo domestic laws and international treaties but exclude the public from the proceedings.

The anti-capitalist campaigner José Bové compared himself to Gandhi when he went on trial yesterday for demolishing a McDonald's restaurant in a southern French market town.