World Watch

Brussels
A World Trade University to give the world's poor access to training in international trade and finance is to be funded jointly by United Nations agencies and private contributions. It hopes to attract more than 600 students during its first year and is expected to be up and running in 2003 with campuses in Beijing and Toronto. Fifteen other campuses across the developing world will follow later.

Canterbury
One of New Zealand's eight universities - Canterbury - shut down for half a day in protest at a government scheme to tie a "woefully inadequate" funding increase of 2.6 per cent to a freeze on tuition fees.

Mexico City
The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico has revived its Jose Julian Marti chair in honour of the poet and statesman whom Cubans traditionally consider to be their greatest hero. Rector Juan Ramón de la Fuente and Jorge Bolanos, Cuba's ambassador to Mexico, said that the event marked an important consolidation of cultural relations between Unam and the University of Havana.

Blantyre
The American University of Syracuse has won exploration rights from the Malawi government to prospect for oil under the bed of Lake Malawi.

Lhasa
The number of college graduates in Tibet has doubled over the past ten years, to 1,262 per 100,000 of the population.

Vienna
Austria's public employees union has called off a nationwide strike of university academics scheduled for this week after reaching a deal with the government on a planned reform of university lecturers' pay and working conditions.

Buenos Aires
Rectors and students at Argentina's state universities are to oppose government plans to introduce an additional quota on university fees for students whose parents earn more than 2,000 pesos (£1,415) a month. National student union leaders described the plan as "a reactionary attack against both state universities and the middle class".

Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina is seeking $100,000 (£70,000) in damages from the originators of an adult website that uses "UNC" in its domain name. The university claims that the uncgirls.com is a dilution of its trademark.

Jerusalem
Ilan Chet, a biotechnologist from the Hebrew University, has been appointed president of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Professor Chet, who takes up the post in December, almost doubled the university's research budget, from $43 million to $82 million, over the past ten years while vice-president for research and development.