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/ 6 December 2006

Nip-and-tuck tourism brings hard cash to Tunisia

Melinda Tricoli sits beaming with joy in a four-star Tunisian hotel after an operation to flatten her stomach. ”I’m so happy. I feel up with the angels. It’s spotless, a job well done,” she enthuses. Tricoli caught a plane from her native France to Tunisia after a botched job by a French surgeon left her with three lumps on her stomach.

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/ 19 June 2006

Experts call on world leaders to curb advancing deserts

Experts at a world conference on desertification in Tunisia on Monday called for political leaders to use the technical tools available to stem the merciless advance of parched land and its devastating social, economic and human consequences. "In most cases, the technical solutions exist and the know-how is available to help the greatest number," a United Nations official said.

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/ 18 November 2005

Free-speech debate simmers at UN summit

A debate about freedom of expression simmered at a United Nations communications summit on Thursday as a French campaigner was stopped from attending and China and Senegal defended limits on free speech. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told journalists that he regretted having given too much freedom to the press.

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/ 18 November 2005

Namibian youth NGO wins WSIS award

A Namibian NGO producing comic strips to promote use of information and communications technology has won an award in the community-engagement category at the just-ended World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia. The NGO, Schoolnet Namibia, exhibited at the WSIS its comic-strip project.

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/ 16 November 2005

Mugabe attacks US at WSIS opening

The President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, on Wednesday attacked the United States at the opening of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia, for monopolising the governance of the internet. Mugabe said the summit is supposed to engender confidence in internet users outside Europe and North America.

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/ 16 November 2005

Rising to the ICT challenge

At least 800 000 villages — or 30% of the world’s villages — are unconnected to any kind of information and communications technology (ICT), and this requires an investment of about -billion to rectify, said the International Telecommunications Union’s secretary general at the World Summit on Information Society in Tunisia on Tuesday.

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/ 15 November 2005

Cop crackdown at UN summit

Under the incredulous eyes of the participants at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia, journalists and human rights defenders were manhandled, insulted, and then beaten, said the Association for Progressive Communications on Tuesday.

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/ 17 May 2005

Little room for taking Tunisian government to task

The plight of Tunisian attorney Mohamed Abbou has been in the spotlight for several weeks now. The attorney received a three-and-a-half-year sentence last month for having made statements deemed likely to disturb public order, after he criticised Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali’s invitation to Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to attend the World Summit on the Information Society.

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/ 23 May 2004

Gaddafi walks out of Arab summit

Libya’s mercurial leader Moammer Gaddafi walked out of the Arab summit on Saturday, overshadowing debate on democratic reform, condemnation of abuse at United States-run prisons in Iraq and an appeal for protection for the Palestinians. The Libyan leader remarked that the summit was taking place as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was under virtual Israeli house arrest.