After a small delay, due mainly to technical reasons, the Compulog-Net newsletter is out again with this new and hopefully exciting issue. The newsletter has grown over the years from simply reporting the activities of the network to publishing articles that address key issues in the wider development of the field of Computational Logic. Following the general trend of research work in Computational Logic that tries to link this to other fields and show its significance and role in these, this issue of the newsletter contains several articles that emphasize both the industrial potential of Computational Logic and its relevance in the development of other research areas.

A special report on the first Strategic Planning Workshop of the network can be found in the section on network Activities. This workshop, together with a follow up meeting planned to take place at JICSLPÕ98 in Manchester, aim to identify and define the key general directions that research and other efforts in Computational Logic should follow. Other articles along this theme of expanding the industrial and wider relevance of Computational Logic include a special report from the Arthur Andersen company on how to get Computational Logic into real-life applications, a report on the activities of the Logic, Languages and Constraints group at ENS Paris, a report on Spatial Databases and Spatial Logic and many others. Another report of particular interest to new developments is the article from Databases to Web-Bases found in the Logic Based Databases section.

There are also many reports from interesting meetings that have happened over the last year. Some of these meetings are: an advanced industrial seminar on Biomedical Applications of Computational Logic, a Workshop in the AISB series on Automated Reasoning, the first Inductive Logic Programming Summer School (note the author: an old newcomer), the third International Workshop on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems and the fourth International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning. Other novel features of this issue include a report on Compulog Americas (a mirror organization in North America) and a survey of Logic Programming research in Cuba.

This issue is also available electronically at the address http://www.ucy.ac.cy/ucy/cs/compulog/ and other mirror sites that would be set up at different nodes. Electronic versions of the newsletter will be updated periodically over the year with a hard copy of the highlights coming out at the end of the year. New contributions for both forms of the newsletter are welcome. In particular, we would be very interested to receive your comments and suggestions for the improvement and further development of the electronic version of the newsletter.