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WASHINGTON, DC -- A coalition of development and environmental advocates today said a new report by a Congressionally appointed commission is a welcome acknowledgement that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group are largely failing in their mission to address world poverty and economic stability, and need major overhaul.

On the occasion of the first meetings of the governing bodies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the 21st century, we call for the immediate suspension of the policies and practices that have caused widespread poverty, inequality, and suffering among the world's peoples and damage to the world's environment.

The cholera outbreak in KwaZulu-Natal, which has claimed 31 lives, could be related to the government's growth, employment and redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the National Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) said on Monday.

Race has become such a scary word to the World Bank that its officials found themselves referring to it as the 'R-word' while responding to charges that the institution had skirted race in its recent World Development Report.

Bush, the Republican candidate for the Nov. 7 US presidential elections, is more leery of the current role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, analysts say.

Over a thousand environmental protesters today stormed police barricades in New Delhi, and marched up to the offices of the World Bank, demanding they be allowed to meet with visiting Bank president James Wolfensohn.

Famed anti-Narmada dam campaigner, Medha Patkar, Friday entered the third day of her hunger protest, in the city of Bhopal, the capital of central Madhya Pradesh state. The state is the home of most of the quarter million, mainly indigenous people to be displaced by the four billion-U.S. dollar Sardar Sarovar dam.

The leader of one of India's largest technology outsourcing companies, Satyam Computer Services, on Wednesday admitted cooking its books and committing other grave financial wrongdoing to inflate profits over several years. The revelation shook India's stock market and sent shockwaves across the country's booming software industry.

Every year the World Bank and its regional counterparts such as the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, collectively known as Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), lend $45 billion to the so-called ''developing'' world.

What is the World Bank? Created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the World Bank Group is comprised of five agencies that make loans or guarantee credit to 177 member countries.

PRAGUE -- In a day of protests that were more colorful than violent, 9,000 demonstrators surrounded Prague's Congress Center where the World Bank and IMF are holding their annual meeting.

If you ask a Mexican farmer, Indian civil servant, Filipina garment worker, Bolivian miner or South African student what structural adjustment is, chances are they would be able to explain IMF and World Bank mandated belt tightening because their lives have been touched by it.

PRAGUE -- Yehoshua Tzarfati has a chilling story to tell. He came to Prague to help as a medic during this week's World Bank/IMF demonstrations.

The final day of the World Bank/IMF protests ranged from stand offs between protestors and police, an obsession with violence on the part of the media, and excitement and hopefulness from organizers and activists.

Dr. Vineeta Gupta is a physician and human rights activist based in Punjab, India. She has focused her efforts on World Bank efforts to privatize healthcare in Punjab. According to Dr. Gupta, the result of World Bank policies has not been greater access to healthcare.

Scholar Walden Bello says a Bush presidency is bad news for the Bank and the Fund.

The ''report of the international financial institution advisory commission'' sounds so innocuous. It is not. In the current US debate, it will be explosive. The question is whether it will end with pure destruction or efficient replacements for the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and regional development banks of today.

Kenyan human rights activists are adding their voices to those already opposed to the World Bank driven land reforms, which they say, seek to make land "just another commodity" to be subjected to the whims of market forces, at the expense of millions of landless peasants.