In an historic land claim case, the Regional Land Claims Commission in South Africa has returned nearly 700 hectares of prime land to the Getrudsburg community. The residents were forcibly removed from their community nearly 40 years ago.

"The world needs a global war on poverty and environmental degradation that is as aggressive and well funded as the war on terrorism," recommends the Worldwatch Institute in its annual State of the World report released Thursday.

The worldwide decimation of wildlife by humans could be "permanent on multi-million year timescales," warns James Kirchner of the University of California at Berkeley. Kirchner's analysis of long term trends in the fossil record suggests that natural speed limits constrain how quickly biodiversity can rebound after waves of extinction.

A French parliamentary commission on modern slavery has found the country's law and procedures inadequate to deal with human trafficking and other forms of slavery in France.

The Botswana government's prudent management of the diamond-dependent economy will be challenged by the global economic slowdown, a growing HIV/AIDS burden, and the regional impact of the Zimbabwe crisis, the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) said in its latest forecast.