Google goes green

Source: San Francisco Chronicle | by Verne Kopytoff

Google Inc. says it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop renewable energy as part of an ambitious plan to clean the environment and reduce the company’s own power bill. The Mountain View company said Tuesday that it will open its deep pockets to foster innovation in solar, wind and geothermal technology in the hopes of making green energy cheaper than power produced by burning coal.

U.N. Report: Iceland best place to live, Africa worst

Source: Reuters

Iceland has overtaken Norway as the world’s most desirable country to live in, according to an annual U.N. table published on Tuesday that again puts AIDS-afflicted sub-Saharan African states at the bottom. Rich free-market countries dominate the top places, with Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada and Ireland the first five but the United States slipping to 12th place from eighth last year in the U.N. Human Development Index.

U.N. sets first step for worlwide moratorium on death penalty

by Andreas S. von Warburg

The death penalty has many supporters and many critics, around the world and in the United States. For many countries it fulfills a preventive function, for many others it is just a barbaric remnant of the past. The political nature of the debate revolving around capital punishment is so delicate that even the United Nations has so far avoided any action. Until now!

U.N. Internet forum focuses on fighting sex predators

Source: AFP

The second UN forum on governance of the Internet has closed with participants agreeing on the need to protect children from sexual predators using the web to lure victims.

Governance Internet Forum opens in Brazil, US role dominates discussion

Source: Associated Press | by Michael Astor

U.S. control over how Internet addresses are assigned — and thus how people around the world access e-mail and Web sites — dominated discussions as a major U.N. conference on the Internet opened here Monday.

U.N. climate chief confident on Bali progress

Source: Reuters | by Annika Breidthardt

The U.N.’s top climate change official said on Tuesday he was confident world governments meeting in Bali next month would finally begin negotiations on mapping out a second plan to fight global warming.

A successor to the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions must be established by 2009, three years before Kyoto runs out, Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Reuters in an interview.

U.N. launches poverty monitoring site

Source: Reuters Canada

The United Nations launched a new Web site powered by Google and network equipment maker Cisco on Thursday that will show how and where the world is succeeding or failing in meeting the Millennium Development Goals on ending poverty.

ICANN appoints New Zealand’s Thrush as new chairman

Source: ICANN

Peter Dengate Thrush, a New Zealand lawyer, has been elected unanimously as the new Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

“I am delighted that my colleagues have placed their confidence in me for this challenging and important role,” Dengate Thrush said.