POLITICS-U.S.: Bush Pushes Plan to Permit Internet Surveillance

The Bush administration is pushing to ratify an international convention that civil libertarians say would pose serious threats to privacy rights at home and abroad.

ECUADOR: Micro-Entrepreneurs Set Sights on E-Commerce

A community project in Ecuador is making the most of the Internet economy, which is otherwise considered out of reach for most countries of the developing South, according to the United Nations E-Commerce and Development Report 2003.

COMMUNICATION: Civil Society Goes for Own WSIS Declaration

Civil society groups' issuance of their own version of a declaration - apart from the official document of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that ended Friday - reflects their disappointment over the meeting's failure to push for people-centred information and communication societies.

COMMUNICATIONS: Civil Society’s Star Rises at WSIS

For the first time, an international summit of representatives from civil society and the private sector took place with the participation of governments, said one observer with irony, surprised by the role played by non-governmental organisations at the World Summit on the Information Society.

CULTURE: Global Systems Selling Out Indigenous Knowledge – Forum

In one part of the northern Philippines, the naming of a child begins with a history "lesson".

DEVELOPMENT: Digital Fund to be Considered Later

A decision to set up a Digital Solidarity Fund advocated by some of the poorest countries will have to await the second phase of the global information summit.

COMMUNICATION: Everyone Wants to Govern the Internet

When typing in a web address (like www.ipsnews.net) or sending an e-mail, most people probably don't give much thought to how Internet domain names are assigned.

SCIENCE: Experts Probe How to Apply Knowledge Beyond Creating ICTs

As the acknowledged engine behind the sweeping technological advances of our time, scientific discoveries and innovations are at the heart of discussions on how the information society - which science itself has made possible - can better serve the needs of humanity, particularly of peoples in the developing countries.

DEVELOPMENT: WSIS Focuses on Illiteracy and Poverty

Share the benefits of information technology with the poorest countries and shape its use to fight illiteracy and poverty: this is the gist of appeals to rich countries and business organisations at the first global summit on information.

COMMUNICATIONS: No Mysteries at WSIS

The World Summit on the Information Society is proving a rara avis of international conferences in the sense that before it began Wednesday all of the major controversies that emerged during the two years of preparations had largely been resolved.

LATIN AMERICA: Cell Phones – From Status Symbol to Tool of the Masses

In the early 1990s, Uruguayan businessman Luis Rodríguez asked his secretary to call him during a meeting with some of his clients. He had a cellular telephone and he wanted to show it off.

COMMUNICATIONS: Who Should Master the Domains?

As the WSIS opens, the international community finds itself drawn into the debate over whether the Internet's core infrastructure, the domains, should remain managed by industry or be taken over by governments, via the United Nations.

CULTURE: Group to Develop Internet Tools With Indigenous Worldview

Type "sacred circle" into the Internet's 'Google' search engine and you will uncover hundreds of thousands of references. Now, one group wants the World Wide Web itself to function much more like the circle, whose concept of balance is integral to many of the world's indigenous peoples.

EDUCATION-CUBA: Rural Students Benefit from Computers, Solar Panels

"My kids didn't know what traffic lights were. Now they even understand how they work," says the director of a childcare centre in rural Pinar del Río province, in western Cuba. The change is the result of the arrival of technology to remote towns.

COMMUNICATION: Online Women Say Nations Must Meet Their ICT Needs

Countries must do more to develop information and communication technology (ICT) agendas that take gender difference into account, while the international community must work harder to include women in decision-making, according to a just-ended online forum on the role of women in ICT.

COMMUNICATION: A Steep Climb to the Information Society Summit

Everyone wants to bridge the information and telecommunications divide - governments, the private sector and civil society - but with less than four weeks to go before the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), agreement on how to tackle the issue remains elusive.

POLITICS: U.N. Still Overlooks Women Victims of Conflict – Experts

Three years after the U.N. Security Council recognised the plight of women in armed conflicts, the United Nations has launched a website aimed to become the most comprehensive databank on women and armed conflict.

TECHNOLOGY: Online Government Not Connecting With Everyone

The increasing shift of government services online has not benefited all sectors of society equally, says a report released by a consortium of e-government watchdog groups here.

WSIS: Unions Want Employment Issues on Agenda

Global unions are concerned that organisers of the World Summit on the Information Society due to open in Geneva December have ignored key employment issues.

COMMUNICATIONS: The South Picks Up the Mobile Phone

Every call made via mobile telephone in the developing world is encouraging for the information and communications technologies industry, headquartered in rich countries and floundering for more than three years.

TECHNOLOGY: U.N. Recruits Expats to Help Bridge Digital Divides

The United Nations is marshalling the technological, entrepreneurial and professional expertise and resources of Latin American and Caribbean expatriates in the United States to help bridge the digital divide in their home countries.