DEVELOPMENT: Digital Divide Becoming a Vast Chasm

While information and communications technologies (ICTs) have an important role in meeting internationally agreed development goals, one in every six people still does not even own a telephone, according to experts meeting here.

MILLENNIUM GOALS-CUBA: Educational Focus Shifts from Quantity to Quality

Universal primary education, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations in 2000, has been a reality in Cuba for so long that it essentially taken for granted, leading both parents and the authorities to shift their attention to the quality of education received by Cuban schoolchildren.

RIGHTS: Child Labour a ‘Necessary Evil’

"Child labour is evil," says Aimé Bada, a defender of minors' rights from Senegal. "But it is a necessary evil, because without the income the children earn in the poorest countries of the world, their families would be worse off."

POLITICS-US: Visa Policy Costing Economy Billions

As Congress returns to Washington facing what promises to be a rancorous debate on how to protect U.S. borders, a leading immigration think-tank is charging that U.S. visa policies - a key tool in promoting national security - are in danger of compromising U.S. economic competitiveness and foreign policy goals.

EDUCATION-BRAZIL: Integration Now Extends to Language

South American integration has finally extended to language training in Brazil, thanks to a new law that makes it mandatory for all secondary schools in this Portuguese-speaking giant to teach Spanish, the language spoken by the vast majority of the continent's nations.

EDUCATION: No Colonial Hangups as Malays Rush to Learn English

It is three o'clock in the afternoon on a normal weekday in this small town, about 110 kms south of the national capital, and Hafsiah, 9, and her brother Badrul, 12, are tearing up the stairs of a three-storey shop house to enter a room full of students eager to learn English.

PAKISTAN: Need for Girls’ Education Felt but Schools are Missing

Ghazala Bibi, 21, considers herself privileged to be studying for a bachelors degree even though she has to do it privately and from her home, a two-hour drive into the hills north-east of the national capital.

POLITICS: At Forty, Singapore Craves More of the Same

At forty, like a successful man approaching a mid-life crisis, what this nation of four million people yearns for is more of the same.

RIGHTS: The Miseducation of Canada’s First Nations

In the small island community of Alert Bay near northern Vancouver Island, hundreds of survivors of St. Michael's Residential School stood on the idyllic shoreline near the U'mista Cultural Centre around ten in the morning. It was misty as the fog rolled in and perched on the calm water.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Don’s Sacking Fuels Charges of Racism in Academia

It took the intervention of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi before Universiti Malaya approved leave for a prominent academic to take up a prestigious United Nations assignment.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY: New Universities for a Multicultural Mexico

Seven intercultural universities in Mexico are going a long way towards preserving the historical and cultural roots of the country's indigenous community, which comprises more than 10 percent of the country's 106 million people.

POLITICS-US: Congress Balks at Bush’s Weird Science

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush's endorsement of the teaching of "intelligent design" as a theory of how the universe began, coupled with Sen. Bill Frist's backing of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, points to an almost certain trainwreck between Congress and the White House - as well as open warfare between the scientific community and members of the conservative religious right.

MIDEAST-NORTH AFRICA: Women Entrepreneurs the ‘Motor for Development’

Give Arab women the chance to become entrepreneurs by facilitating access to education, professional training and financial resources, and you will start the motor of economic development and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa region.

G8 SUMMIT: Debt Cancellation No Panacea for Benin – Analysts

Some may see it as a just reward for years of fiscal discipline. For others, it is a gesture that will ultimately do little to address poverty in Benin. What there is no disputing, is that the debt relief given to Benin last month by the Group of Eight (G8) is as much a source of controversy as satisfaction.

RIGHTS-US: The New McCarthyism

A spectre is again haunting U.S. colleges and universities.

TECHNOLOGY-KENYA: On the Way to Getting Wired

In 1961, there was just one to be had. By 1985, that figure had increased to 1,800 - and at the beginning of last year, it stood at about 520,000, according to government figures.

REFUGEES: After the Struggle to Arrive in South Africa, a Struggle for Education

The effort to combine work and studies is taking its toll on Desiré Rwamagana, a Rwandan refugee who lives in South Africa’s commercial hub – Johannesburg.

AUSTRALIA: Foreign Dollars Entice ‘Bush’ Campus to the City

The Central Queensland city of Rockhampton is over 1,000 kms from Sydney, but its university, set up over a decade ago to bring tertiary education to outback Queensland, runs a campus in a leased multi-storey building in Sydney today that has more students than its parent.

POLITICS: White House Seeks Softer, Gentler Liaison to Arab World

If enthusiastic White House and Congressional support could solve Washington's public diplomacy problems, Dina Habib Powell would be well on her way to becoming a national heroine.

RIGHTS-EGYPT: Censorship Chills University Life, Report Charges

Academic freedom in Egypt is being constantly undermined by both the government and private groups through censorship, intimidation of students and professors, and even threats and physical violence, according to a report by a leading human rights organisation released Thursday.

HAITI: A Hill Impossible to Climb

Whereas the ''favelas'' in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro are set high up in the hills ringing the city, the hilltops around the Haitian capital are home to palatial mansions, and the housing becomes poorer and more and more precarious as the slopes flatten into the sea.