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A New Yorker looks at the squandered opportunities to make desperately needed changes in the American psyche and global policy following last September 11th.

Despite improvements in labour market performance in industrialized countries and the growing potential of information technology to create jobs and spur development, the global employment picture remains ''deeply flawed'' for workers in many parts of the world, according to a new report by the International Labour Office (ILO).

The undersigned civil society organisations strongly disagree with the main messages contained in the UNDP Human Development Report 2001. The report taken in its entirety forms an unabashed pat on the back for the hi-tech bandwagon on which a minority of powerful elites are galloping to even greater riches, even more power.

In a trail-blazing 27-page order, Alameda Superior Court Judge James A. Richman dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against a breast implant awareness activist, finding that it was a meritless SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).

Spurred by unprecedented stock-market wealth, land-use, tax and development policies are skewing economic incentives almost exclusively toward a postindustrial, dot-com society. Alternatives that might better distribute technology and capital among the population and diversify the economy are being sacrificed.

As both the Democratic and Republican parties jockey to win the favor of the high-tech industry, U.S. trade officials under Clinton and now under the Bush Administration have been aggressively promoting high tech's global interests by breaking down barriers to electronic commerce.

AOL has been a leading proponent of open access -- meaning those who control high-speed internet access through cable systems or other means not have the power to discriminate against internet service providers that they do not control or favor. In buying Time Warner, AOL suddenly acquires one of the largest cable systems in the country, and gains a material interest in opposing open access.

Four trillion dollars is a lot of money. It is the entire annual output of Britain and France put together. It is also the amount American investors in high-tech shares have lost over the past 12 months -- and that's before their losses in the rest of the stock market.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked the Federal Communications Commission yesterday to withhold approval of AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth until it reviews allegations that the companies gave customer records to the government without warrants.

Realising that the state is lagging behind other provinces in India's great information technology (IT) race, the rulers of Kerala have shed off ideological opposition to high technology.

Arriving in Buenos Aires from the pampa hinterland is like playing a simulation game called First World. The concentration of capital, concrete and a third of the Argentine population is dizzying for anyone approaching from the small farming towns of the province or from the far-flung villages of empty Patagonia and the northern altiplano.

There was more than a little of the surreal to President Bush's speech yesterday. The speech, billed as a major policy address on Bush's get-tough-on-corporate-crime agenda, came amidst days of news revelations of President's own questionable behavior as an executive of Harken Energy.

International policy-makers this week ended a round of talks aimed at setting common rules affecting online trade and commerce, but they made little progress in bridging divisions that threaten to delay the pact.

European leaders have ordered police and intelligence agencies to co-ordinate their efforts to identify and track the anti-capitalist demonstrators whose violent protests at recent international summits culminated in the shooting dead by police of a young protester at the Genoa G8 meeting last month.

Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A number of safari companies in Africa used Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm, to evade taxes on income from foreign clients, according to data from the 'Panama Papers' a leaked cache of 11.5 million documents revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Thomson Safaris, a Massachusetts company that runs the luxury Enashiva tourist camp near the Serengeti wildlife park in Tanzania, has been sued over 10,000 acres of land that the company allegedly acquired illegally from Maasai tribes.

Media attending the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro are being housed in apartments constructed by workers "in conditions analogous to slavery" by Cyrela, the largest real estate company in Brazil. The local community has also complained that the construction has ruined the water supply and destroyed forested areas.

Serengeti national park is under threat from Ortello Business Corporation in a deal that could displace 48,000 indigenous Maasai and open it up for hunting of lions and leopards. An urgent action by Avaaz, an international campaigning group, has gathered close to a million signatures to protest the scheme.

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