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Once it was heralded as the last bastion of freedom of speech, a realm which transcended national law and the whims of the courts. But last night the internet was facing up to a harsh new reality after Australia's supreme court ruled that a local businessman could sue a website for libel in Melbourne even though it was based in the United States.

December 9, 2002) -- On November 19, 2002, the oil tanker Prestige broke in two and sank off the Spanish coast. The vessel was carrying 77,000 tons of fuel oil. Fuel oil, a heavy, viscous blend gathered from the bottom of tanks at the end of the refining process, can be far more toxic and difficult to clean up than crude oil. Ecologists fear that the 26-year-old Prestige is an environmental time bomb as it is now resting 130 miles (210 km) off the Spanish coast and 3.6 km (two miles) below the surface

Russian oil companies are trying to secure new contracts with Baghdad in an attempt to dominate Iraq's huge reserves and hold Washington to its promise of respecting Moscow's economic interests in the event of a regime change.

At least 700,000 people are trafficked worldwide each year; trafficking is the fastest growing means by which people are enslaved today. Young girls are trafficked to work as domestics in West Africa, boys as young as four are abducted from countries in South Asia and forced to work as camel jockeys in the Gulf, and women from eastern Europe are sold into Europe's sex industry.

"We don't want to be an American colony!" shouted demonstrators who staged massive protests in Quito, Ecuador, on Oct. 31, as the region's trade ministers held their seventh meeting on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Meanwhile, thousands of Brazilians took to the streets of So Paulo to protest the deal, set to take effect in 2005, which would create the world's largest free-trade zone, with a market of 800 million people.

ATYRAU, KAZAKHSTAN December 4, 2002 -- The largest oil find for more than 20 years -- almost the size of the world's biggest, the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia -- is being developed in the Caspian Sea amid growing anger from the local people.

Internet sites containing the words "democracy", "Tibet" and "Taiwan" are among those most frequently blocked by the Chinese government, a study of Chinese net access has revealed

NEW YORK - A group of socially responsible investment funds, with assets valued at $13 billion, are urging Dow Chemical Company to address ongoing economic, health and environmental liabilities stemming from a poisonous gas leak in Bhopal, India, which has killed and injured tens of thousands of people to date. The investors, Trillium Asset Management, Domini Social Investments, Calvert Group and others, sent a letter to Dow"s CEO Michael Parker and board Chair William Stavropoulos, calling on them to "continue dialogue with representatives of Bhopal citizens groups, to take their claims seriously, and to work towards a mutually acceptable solution."

Tuvalu is like many places brushing up against development, simultaneously simple and complex. Island life hums along here, a small place where everyone knows everyone else, where children ask visitors names, and remember them days or weeks later.

SAN FRANCISCO, California, December 3, 2002 (ENS) -- For a second time, the courts have ruled against federal plans to resume oil and natural gas drilling off the California coast. A three judge panel from a federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the government illegally extended 36 undeveloped oil leases off the central California coast, effectively blocking the renewal of the decades old leases.