The Zimbabwe Mirror Newspaper Group (ZMNG) board has defied a High Court order lifting the suspension of the paper’s founding editor-in-chief and CEO, Dr Ibbo Mandaza, writes Gugu Ziyaphapha in an article reposted on www.journalism.co.za The publishing group slapped Mandaza with a fresh suspension letter outside the court building soon after Justice Bharet Patel lifted Mandaza’s October suspension. The group publishes the Mirror and Sunday Mirror.

FrontlineSMS is an affordable, standalone turn-key 'out-of-the-box' solution that allows small organizations, NGO's, charities, etc. the ability to access 'group' SMS technology anywhere a mobile network signal can be reached. No connection to the Internet necessary.

In a move that could cast doubt on the continued independence of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Xolela Mangcu has quit as a director of the research institute due to what he calls "undue and inappropriate political interference". Mangcu is the first senior member to break ranks at the HSRC. His sudden resignation could ratchet up fears that government is seeking to impose a greater hold on supposedly autonomous organisations.

Ordinary Tunisians are still living in the darkness of a regime that watches them, intimidates them, and denies them the right to free speech, says this report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "Ironically, WSIS might well have made conditions worse for local journalists, at least temporarily, because it provoked more crackdowns by the government."

The Nigerian government in a landmark move has paid compensation to families of six people wrongly shot and killed by police. Police Affairs Minister Broderick Bozimo on Friday (December 2) paid out cheques of three million naira (US $21,000) each to representatives of the families of five men and one woman killed by police in June 2005. The police had claimed the six were armed robbers, killed while trading gunfire with police in the Apo district of the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Bozimo said a judicial inquiry launched by the government found “incontrovertible evidence” the victims were not armed robbers. “Government therefore exonerates the six victims and apologises to their families and in fact all Nigerians,” he said.

Lisa Vetten, manager of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation's Gender-Based Violence Programme, will be part of an Agenda e-talk. The e-talk will be held on Thursday the 8th of December from 13:00 - 14:00 SA time. You can join the chat by going to the online community section on the Agenda website (http://www.agenda.org.za) and clicking on Agenda e-talk link or by following the link below.

More than 7000 people gathered in rural Cofimvaba in the Eastern Cape on Saturday, to celebrate the “Vulamasango Singene” campaign, which aims to secure compensation for victims of betterment dispossession in the province. The stadium in Cofimvaba was filled with people from 85 villages in the western part of the former Transkei, wearing yellow t-shirts with the campaign slogan: Vulamasango Singene (open the doors, we go in). Music and dance groups were performing in front of the excited crowd, who also listened to speak-outs from people whose land was taken away when the betterment policy of the former apartheid government was implemented from the 1930´s and onwards. Nomkhita Davidson spoke about the day when her family was forcibly removed in the 1960s. “They burned our houses and chased us with guns. We ran away without our possessions. A woman had to give birth to her child in the mountains. Gun shots were fired all around us. It was a terrible day”, she said.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the censorship of many websites supporting the Polisario Front’s struggle for Sahrawi independence, such as Arso.org, which have been made inaccessible within Morocco. Calling on the Moroccan authorities to stop blocking access to sites dealing with Western Sahara, the organisation said : “It should not be possible to take a decision to filter a website without a fair trial taking place first. Banning an online publication simply on the basis of an administrative decision is a serious violation of free expression.”

Three television crews were prevented from covering the third round of voting in Egypt’s parliamentary elections that took place in nine provinces on 1 December. Police stopped an Al-Hurra crew from shooting the surroundings of a polling station in El-Mansoura (120 km north of Cairo) which received a lot of coverage in the first two rounds. An Al Jazeera crew was prevented from filming in Bandar-Kafr-El-Sheikh, north of the capital. Plain-clothes agents confiscated their camera, destroyed their video-cassette and threatened to break the camera if they tried to film again or take photos. Security agents briefly detained a three-member CNBC Arabiya crew that tried to cover the elections in El-Zaqaziq (83 km east of Cairo).

The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is deeply troubled by the continued imprisonment of Salifou Soumaila Abdoulkarim, director of the private weekly Le Visionnaire. Abdoulkarim was sentenced on Friday to two months in jail and a symbolic one-franc CFA fine for allegedly defaming State Treasurer Siddo Elhadj. "Jailing journalists for critical reporting is totally unacceptable," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. "We call on the government of Niger to release Abdoulkarim, and work toward the elimination of criminal libel."

The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is outraged by news that Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaac was returned to jail just two days after being released in mid-November. Isaac is one of 15 Eritrean journalists who have been jailed incommunicado and without charge or forced into extended military service following a September 2001 clampdown that shut down the country's private press. CPJ sources confirmed that Isaac, who has dual Swedish and Eritrean nationality, has been returned to jail. During his brief release, he was able to phone his wife in Sweden as well as Leif Öbrink, a close friend who heads a campaign in Sweden for his release.

At the start of his retrial for the crime, Anibal dos Santos Junior, or Anibalzinho, has denied any involvement in the 2000 murder of Mozambican investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, writes Charles Mangwiro in a story reposted on www.journalism.co.za ”I neither killed nor contracted anybody to kill Cardoso,” Anibalzinho told the Maputo city court. He was previously sentenced to Mozambique’s longest jail term of 28 and half years after being tried in absentia two years ago.

Who will tell the stories of contemporary Africa? A new generation has emerged since Nigeria's Chinua Achebe in 1958 wrote the first "African" novel, "Things Fall Apart," detailing the destruction of the Igbo culture by British colonialism. Three new African narrators--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of Nigeria, Leila Aboulela of Sudan and Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe--have taken the lead in telling eloquent and stirring stories of women's lives as part of the region's narrative.

UNIC is looking for someone with knowledge of at least two programming languages, basic systems analysis and design techniques, testing, debugging, and documentation standards, and database design. Good analytical and problem solving skills and ability to handle a range of systems-related issues to work as an Information Systems Assistant in their Pretoria office.

The online course, Holocaust and Human Behavior, is a powerful learning experience that provides an overview of the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust. Throughout the course, connections are made to other histories, such as those of Rwanda and South Africa. Participants relate the choices people made at other times with those faced in the world today.

A new Web initiative launched at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), will connect anyone with Internet access and the desire to learn to a world of free, high-quality open educational materials. The Development Gateway Foundation's "Open Educational Resources" portal aims to equalize access to education and help people in developing countries improve their chances for a better life.

The Streaming Suitcase is a resource for those wanting to learn to stream. The material is all licensed under Creative Commons and is free to download and distribute. The manuals are all available online, and can be downloaded in PDF, or output in a print friendly format. The manuals will also be updated periodically so check them for updates.

Amnesty International has found a new “weapon” to use in its battle against torture: cell-phone text messages. These messages of up to 160 characters and transmitted by cell phone are known in many countries by the acronym SMS, which stands for “short-messaging service.” With these messages, protests can be gathered faster than ever, enabling Amnesty International to take action against torture and other abuses more quickly. About 39 percent of the cell-phone campaigns conducted by Amnesty in 2002 were successful. Prisoners of conscience were released, people who had “disappeared” were found and death sentences were not carried out.

The Zimbabwean government is refusing to protect and assist hundreds of thousands of people displaced by its campaign of forced evictions, Human Rights Watch said in a report released this week. At the same time, Zimbabwe is deliberately obstructing efforts by international humanitarian agencies to provide assistance and protection to the displaced.

Breaches of human rights principles by two member states warrant immediate reference to the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), according to a communiqué by the Commonwealth Human Rights Forum. The forum’s report also urged an examination of breaches of the Harare Commonwealth Principles in Uganda and the Maldives. It also asked that the people and opposition in Zimbabwe not to be forsaken.