Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, and its sister publication, The Daily News on Sunday, will lay off the bulk of their staff by the end of the week. The publishers, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), have bowed to the financial pressure caused by the regular closure of the pro-opposition newspapers by the authorities.

Silvia Sansoni, a journalist who works for the British weekly news magazine "The Economist", was expelled from Nigeria on 19 February 2004 after being taken to Lagos airport under police escort and placed on a Paris-bound flight. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expressed shock over the incident, which the organisation considers to be a press freedom violation. RSF said, however, "We are not really surprised. The Nigerian authorities have been treating the foreign press with contempt for several years and have never stopped making the lives of foreign correspondents very difficult."

Fears by local democratic watchdogs over South Africa's sincerity in resolving the deepening crisis in Zimbabwe were clearly vindicated when that country's Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma defended the recent Supreme Court ruling legitimising sections of the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). The Herald reported Zuma as saying her government had no plans to discuss AIPPA with their Zimbabwean counterparts as the legislation was constitutional. Said Zuma rather blithely: "We accept it. Should we not accept it? What is really the issue? Has any journalist been refused registration? Have reasons been given for that?" Read the full story in the latest edition of the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe newsletter.

This paper examines the co-evolution of ICTs and communication rights and provides a historical analysis through several generations of human rights developments of the inter-relationships between technical advances that enabled new communication modalities and the subsequent social and organisational interests that evolved.

Capacity.org features a new issue every quarter. Each issue focuses on a particular theme, with a Welcome Letter, a Selected Bibliography and Guest Contributions. Other sections are updated regularly. The newsletter focuses on the wealth of new methodologies, guidelines and tools that have been designed to promote institutional development.

While much has been made of the so-called digital divide, the reality of the issue is that it is also a capacity and human resource divide. This is according to David Hartshorn, secretary general of the Global VSAT Forum (GVF). He was discussing ways to overcome this problem at the SatCom Africa 2004 satellite technology conference, taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre.

In July 2003, HURIDOCS launched the pilot version of HURISEARCH, a tool for searching human rights information on the Web, http://www.hurisearch.org. HURISEARCH allows searching sites of non-governmental human rights organisations in 58 different languages, including many European languages but also others such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Swahili and Vietnamese. The hardware for HURISEARCH has recently been expanded, and it now includes over 1300 sites of human rights NGOs. Suggestions to include additional sites are welcome.

The Equinet Newsletter is the newsletter of the Network for Equity in Health in Southern Africa and delivers a comprehensive round-up of equity and health issues. You will receive two issues from this mailing list per month. One will contain a briefing of Equinet's activities and the other links to information about equity and health issues in the content categories of Equity in Health; Values, Policies and Rights; Health equity in economic and trade policies; Poverty and health; Equitable health services; Human Resources; Public-Private Mix; Resource allocation and health financing; Equity and HIV/AIDS; Governance and participation in health and Monitoring equity and research policy. There are also sections that include the latest jobs, conferences and other useful resources related to equity in health. Read the newsletter online by clicking on the URL provided.

A journalist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spent one year in preventive detention at Kinshasa's Penitentiary and Re-education Centre, national media rights NGO Journaliste en danger (JED) reported on Friday. JED recalled that on 14 February 2003 National Intelligence Agency officers arrested Bamporiki Chamira, a journalist with the daily La Tempete des Tropiques, in the capital, Kinshasa. Chamira was accused of plotting to kill President Joseph Kabila, trying to overthrow the government and seeking to avenge the death of Commander Anselme Massasu.

At the recent 23rd International Fundraising Conference held in the Netherlands, a survey found that more than half of Germans and 20 per cent of Britons under the age of 40 prefer to give donations online. That is good news, especially for those South African NPOs thinking about, or already raising funds online. Unfortunately, raising funds over the Internet is fraught with challenges. The digital divide, insufficient marketing skills and experience, and gaining donor confidence are just some of the difficulties facing NPOs trying to fundraise through the Internet

Government has announced that it is drawing up an interim policy on the dumping of workers. Cabinet announced last week that it had resolved that while Government was rightly and legally emphasising orderly land reform and resettlement programmes, it should, as a matter of urgency and absolute necessity, introduce a Temporary Intervention Policy of Eviction - pending long-term solutions to the problem. The policy would be aimed at farm labourers and their dependents and would take into account their length of service on the farm.

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is seeking five fellows for the 2004 Foster Davis Fellowships for African Journalists who are accomplished journalists positioned for expanded leadership roles. They do not need to be full-time trainers. They do need to have a passion to teach fellow journalists. This means they need already to have acquired some repute as newsroom coaches and mentors. This is important. Unless the applicant has already demonstrated that passion, their application/nomination would be discouraged.

The Ugandan Supreme Court has declared that the offence of 'publishing false news' was incompatible with the right to freedom of expression. This means that journalists in Uganda can no longer be charged with "publication of false news". Justice Joseph Mulenga, delivering the lead judgment, ruled that the right to freedom of expression protects not only that which can be proven to be true. He warned that the offence dated from colonial times and that the only reason why it was still on the books was because Parliament had not yet gotten around to reforming the law. He stressed that the prohibition of false news served no meaningful purpose. On the contrary, it was a vaguely formulated offence, open to misinterpretation and abuse on political grounds, that could not be reconciled with basic democratic principles and the right to freedom of expression.

Télesphore Namukama, a radio programme host with Héritier de la Justice (Heir of Justice), a human rights organisation based in Bukavu, principal city of South Kivu province, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, was arrested on 12 February 2004 by Security and Intelligence Services (Direction de la sécurité et du renseignement, DSR) agents. Namukama also hosts the Swahili-language radio programme "Plaidons pour la justice" ("Let us plead for justice") with the Bukavu-based station Radio Sahuti ya Réhéma (The Voice of Mercy). The DSR has accused the host of "Plaidons pour la justice" of "sowing anxiety within the local population" in the 10 February broadcast of his programme. In the programme, Namukama discussed the recent discovery of arms caches in Bukavu, which cost former provincial governor Xavier Ciribanya his job. Drawing lessons from the situation, Namukama concluded that it is unlikely that peace will return to South Kivu province in the foreseeable future.

The Ethiopian government should end its harassment of an association of independent journalists that has frequently criticized the government's repression of the independent press, Human Rights Watch said in a recent letter to Ethiopia’s prime minister. The Ethiopian Free Journalists Association (EFJA), a group composed of journalists associated with the country’s beleaguered independent press, has come under government attack in recent months for opposing a proposed press law that would tighten government oversight of news reporting. “The Ethiopian government is trying to muffle the independent press,” said Peter Takirambudde, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division.

The Radio Department of the Panos Institute West Africa with support of Unesco, organized a training workshop for its Anglophone radio correspondents in Ghana. The workshops' end result was the design of an Oral Testimony production support project called "Sounds of the Suburbs". The objective of the project was to focus on the life of youngsters in a complex multicultural surrounding. Cities, and especially capitals, tend to expand into an environment characterized by different ethnic, religious, linguistic and social groups. Youth tend to hold a very specific position in these urban areas. As youngsters and participants in the day to day street life, they tend to better integrate into mixed societies. Through this radio production project, Panos West Africa endeavoured to get the views of the youngsters themselves. They are often ignored by traditional urban media, especially if such youngsters come from socially marginalized areas.

The author of the Mydoom virus which is now racing around the net deliberately chose to target home users rather than corporate, government or military users. Home users are 'soft targets' for virus writers. They often barely understand the computer that they have purchased. They use whatever software came with it.

According to latest estimates, Africa still has the lowest level of internet access among world regions, accounting for only 1.4% of the estimated 700 million people online worldwide. But the African internet public is large enough to provide much scope for an abundance of diverse ventures to make creative use of new technologies. The latest issue of AfricaFocus Bulletin highlights several such ventures, taken from African projects that placed among the finalists in the Stockholm Challenge, a program that annually honours innovative use of information and communication technology.

From preventing environmental damage to halting the spread of disease, many 21st-century problems can be tackled with scientific and technological know-how and capacity. But not all nations possess this, and slow progress on the Millennium Development Goals has badly hampered their development. In this article, Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, calls for a new global partnership between the developed and developing worlds that focuses on science and technology. Several initiatives are showing the way, yet more is needed.

The e-guide is a 'one-stop shop' providing both original articles and links to the best material elsewhere. Designed to inspire dialogue, it will grow as registrants from across the globe add their own resources and tips. Wherever you are in the world, if you are interested in communicating information about science more effectively, this is the guide for you. It already contains a wide range of indispensable information.