The United States has attached little importance to Africa, but is now reviewing its oil sources strategy and sub-Saharan Africa, with its good quality reserves, could account for 25% of all US crude oil imports by 2015. Jean-Christophe Servant reports.

Ecuadorians, exhausted by 20 years of neoliberalism which created huge social inequalities, voted last year for a rebellious ex-colonel, Lucio Gutiérrez, as president, a victory made possible by the support of the powerful movement of indigenous peoples. Gutiérrez will have to balance economic development and environmental protection. Francoise Barthelemy reports.

Thousands are coming to Washington for a national antiwar demonstration Saturday, a rally and march that will be the last chance for a massive display of dissent before The Regime goes to war with Iraq. Tens of thousands are planning to make the trip, as organizers from Texas to New York to Wisconsin arrange for charter buses, car caravans and flights to the District.

Why would some physicians be willing tools of the insurance companies who are gouging them regardless of whether they are competent, caring doctors or the negligent, incompetent few who account for most of the claims by injured patients? Ralph Nader seeks answers.

In an interview with Schnews, political analyst Noam Chomsky discusses the war on terror, the arms industry, and anti-war organizing.

Iraq, the so-called enemy, has done nothing to provoke the U.S. and is absolutely no threat to its national safety and has no significant military force and has negligible chance of even setting off a firecracker near the U.S.'s own overwhelming death machines, and whose only weapons of minimal destruction are the rusty short-range warheads and biochemical agents the U.S. sold Iraq 20 years ago, and kept selling, even after the U.S. knew theese weapons were used against itss own people. Mark Morford comments.

The following is adapted from part of a chapter of Chalmers Johnson's new book about American militarism, "The Sorrows of Empire: How the Americans Lost Their Country" (forthcoming in late 2003 from Metropolitan Books).

200 crowd into Pakistan's embassy in Washington D.C. to hear explanation of new INS regulations. In California thousands of Iranians protested the detention of men who tried to register. Pakistanis are concerned about the process, and their rights. Scott Shane reports. Note: access to this article may require joining SunSpot.net, which is free. See also Shane's 1/11/03 article.