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.

SINGAPORE: Media Freedom Lags Far Behind Other ‘Liberties’

Singapore has been loosening controls over a range of activities - from legalising bungee jumping to bar-top dancing and the employment of homosexuals - but its officials' recent statements are a reminder that more media freedom remains quite far behind.

PHILIPPINES: Awareness of Information Society Summit, Debates Low

The onset of the electoral season in the Philippines and lack of resources have combined to lead to poor awareness of a global summit on an information society in Switzerland this week, even though this country is a key exporter of software professionals and skills.

THAILAND: Attempts at Weakening Media a New Battle for Journalists

For most Thai journalists, attempts to control the media in the past two years under the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are a new battlefront they have never experienced before.

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.

HEALTH-CHILE: Critics Question Business ‘Solidarity’ in Telethon

When Victoria and her husband heard that Chile's Telethon 2003 might not reach its fund-raising goal of 17 million dollars, they picked up the phone and donated 10,000 pesos (16 dollars), to add to the equivalent of five dollars that they had previously deposited at the Bank of Chile.

CARIBBEAN: Media See Growing Threat to Free Expression

There was hardly any debate on the contentious clause, even though it was contained in the new criminal code passed by the St. Lucia Parliament last week.

COMMONWEALTH: How to Beat that Democracy Deficit

The Commonwealth heads of government meeting, beginning in the Nigerian capital next week, is committed to promotion of development and democracy - both in heavy deficit among member countries. The answer is open government, says a new report ahead of the meeting.

POLITICS: Media, Not Need, Determine Crisis Funding – U.N.. Chief

Political and media attention, not the needs of the hungry and needy, determine funding to resolve global humanitarian crises, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Tuesday.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: Guerrilla Admakers Try to Buy U.S. TV Airtime

Independent film producer Steve Garfield says there are two reasons he is planning to enter MoveOn.org's 'Bush in 30 Seconds' commercial competition.

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.

INDIA: Technology Helps Untangle Red Tape in Communications

Technology is coming to the aid of reformers determined to leapfrog over a tangle of licences and permits that have held back India's communication sector for decades.

MEDIA-VIETNAM: Openness Does Not Quite Reach the Press

Duong Xuan Nam typifies the spirit of journalism thriving among the upper echelons of Vietnam's media world. He considers his membership in the country's Communist Party as a badge of pride, for instance.

LATIN AMERICA: Media Panel Searches for Optimism

As radio reports broadcast charges that one of the targets hit in U.S. air strikes in Iraq on Wednesday was a warehouse used by the Al-Jazeera cable news network, journalists, law experts and activists gathered here to discuss dangers faced by the media half a world away.

INDIA: Privilege Motion on Newspaper Opens Frontiers of Freedom

India has rarely witnessed the rallying of its public in defence of the freedom of expression as it is seeing today in the case of 'The Hindu' newspaper, which last week faced a harsh punishment of 15 days' jail for its journalists for the 'breach of privilege' of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.

RIGHTS-INDIA: Arrests Stayed, But Raises Fears of Muzzling Media

While the Supreme Court on Monday stayed the arrest of six journalists as ordered by the Tamil Nadu state government, concern continues that the episode is but one more sign of the repression by its chief minister.

MEDIA: Guatemalan Wins Press Freedom Award

A Guatemalan journalist awarded an international press freedom prize Thursday says the recognition will not change things in his country but might empower others to "reveal the truth".

/ARTS WEEKLY/ CUBA: Spectre of Censorship Haunts Biennial

The pluralistic nature of the Havana Arts Biennial is being called into question in its eighth edition since emerging in 1984 as a space for artists of the developing South.