Transparency International chapters in the Caribbean plan to work together to share their expertise and experience across the region and form the Transparency International Caribbean Network. This network will bring together Transparency International chapters in Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago, one partner organisation in Guyana and one in Bahamas that recently joined plus experienced regional anti-corruption activists in St. Kitts and the Cayman Islands.

Public-sector corruption is still a major problem around the world but more countries are improving than worsening and the United States and United Kingdom have reached their best rankings ever, an anti-corruption watchdog said Wednesday.

Sierra Leone poured a lot of money into the battle against Ebola. The government earmarked $18 million of treasury funds and public donations to combat the disease, which has claimed around 3,800 lives there. That's an admirable commitment. But there's just one problem. A third of that money appears to have disappeared.

After 12 years, nearly $700 billion, and more than 2,000 dead U.S. soldiers, here's what the United States has to show for its efforts in Afghanistan: a government that's perceived to be as corrupt as North Korea, according to a new report from the anti-corruption group Transparency International. File it away under things U.S. officials would probably rather ignore.

Donors have been ramping up aid to fragile states, raising fears about funds falling into corrupt hands. A global corruption survey released this week by Transparency International measures how the public perceive corruption in their own countries. The nongovernmental organization asked 114,000 people in 107 countries which institutions do they think are most corrupt. In Afghanistan, where corruption is a huge concern among donors, 60 percent of respondents think the judiciary is the most corrupt.

Corruption and bribery are perceived to be getting worse in many countries, and trust in governments is falling worldwide, according to a survey by the group Transparency International. The Global Corruption Barometer 2013 paints a bleak picture. One in every four people paid a bribe in the last 12 months when accessing public institutions and services, according to Transparency International's report.

Public diplomacy efforts to project a more culturally sensitive regional outreach merely provide a patina of inclusiveness that covers and perpetuates traditional economic interests associated with the inter-American system that is structured to ensure that wealth is pumped up to the top of the economic pyramid.

USC Center on Public Diplomacy Research Associate Gbemisola Olujobi sheds light on one of the pejorative images that has come to define Africa in the eyes of many around the world.

Corruption goes by many names in Africa -- "kola," "egunje," "maslaha," "kompo," "kitu-kidogo," "tikoko," "toshiyar-baki," "sweetener," etc. Everyone recognizes it as a gangrenous evil. Sometimes, however, the line between wrongdoing and the done thing tends to be...a little fuzzy.