Call for the establishment of the Global Dot Org Alliance. Current working title: Health Internet Society (HISOC).

The top United Nations peacekeeping official today confirmed the establishment of a Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) in Ethiopia and Eritrea along the countries' common border. Briefing the UN Security Council on developments in the region, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno called the TSZ's establishment, which was announced yesterday, an "important milestone in the peace process."

Following the events in Benin, where a ship allegedly carrying 250 child slaves docked safely in Cotonou, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has urged its affiliates in West Africa to step up the pressure on their governments to end child slavery. The call comes just as the ICFTU has launched a new global campaign to end child labour.

Local libraries should adopt new technologies to process and store information, a workshop in Kenya was told recently. The director of Unesco, in Nairobi Dr Paul Vitta, challenged libraries to embrace new storage systems where library card catalogues are replaced by online ones for indexing, retrieval and interchange techniques.

The Senate agreed last night that the United States should double current spending on the global battle against HIV/AIDS to more than $1 billion within the next two years.