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The United States will not cede control of the computers that direct traffic on the Internet to the United Nations, the State Department's coordinator for international communications and information policy told diplomats in Geneva on Thursday. Ambassador David Gross said the issue of who controls the Internet has become contentious because some countries say that no single nation should be the ultimate authority over such a vital part of the global economy. The United States has been the principal overseer of the Internet since it was invented as a Defense Department project. Some countries have been discussing a proposal that would take control of domain names from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations. Gross said the United States is “deeply disappointed” with a European Union proposal advocating a “new cooperation model” that would involve governments in restructuring the Internet. “There are certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to,” he said. “It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy.”
[SOURCE: USAToday]

This was to be the year teachers at Gulfport High School went completely digital, which meant some older teachers would have to give up their grade books and transfer that information onto district computers. But Hurricane Katrina put those plans on hold. The storm crippled the city school district's computer network. Katrina's tidal floods and heavy rains have played havoc with millions of dollars of computer technology. And as schools reopen on the Gulf Coast, many are doing so without the benefit of much technology. Across the Coast, Katrina is blamed for $40 million in damage to computers and computer networks in the public schools.
[SOURCE: The Clarion-Ledger, AUTHOR: Chris Joyner chris.joyner@jackson.gannett.com]

Sprint Nextel on Thursday asked the FCC for more time to meet a December 31 deadline that 95 percent of its customers' wireless phones be capable of identifying the location of a user making a 911 emergency call. The No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier will only reach 80 percent by the end of this year and will need until the end of 2007 to reach the 95 percent goal. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, had urged that the approval of Sprint's acquisition of Nextel be conditioned on the companies complying with the deadline or coming up with a plan to do so. But no such condition was attached.
[SOURCE: Reuters]

On September 26, the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting elected its new chairperson and vice-chairperson, and the eight-member board--which contains only two Democrats--selected two conservative Republican funders for these posts. Cheryl Halpern will succeed the embattled liberal-hunter Kenneth Tomlinson as chair. Gay Hart Gaines will be vice-chair. The board chose Gaines over an independent. As press accounts have noted, Gaines, who was first appointed by George W. Bush to the CPB board in 2003, is an interior decorator by training. But she and her husband have contributed at least half a million dollars to GOP causes since 1998. Notably, Gaines was a charter member and chairman of GOPAC, a political action committee headed in the 1980s and 1990s by Newt Gingrich. During that period, GOPAC attracted much attention for dodgy practices (which drew a Federal Elections Commission investigation) and for its harsh partisan practices. So now it's an appropriate time to revisit one of GOPAC's most notorious actions.
[SOURCE: The Nation, AUTHOR: David Corn]