Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka and the newly-appointed special envoy to Somalia, Ambassador Bethwel Kiplagat, have met Somali delegates gathered in the Kenyan town of Eldoret for peace talks. The minister was also expected to express the new government's commitment to the Somali peace process.
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* Aydid opposed to presidential system
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=31845

A Malawian radio journalist was arrested this week for broadcasting an interview with a man who claimed to have been attacked by a vampire, the Guardian reports. Southern Malawi has been rife with rumours of blood-sucking vampires, fuelled by the popular belief that the government is colluding with vampires to collect blood for international aid agencies.

Former THISDAY reporter, Miss Isioma Daniel, whose article about the last Miss World pageant allegedly sparked deadly riots in Kaduna says she will probably spend the rest of her life in hiding. In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Isioma Daniel said her initial guilt soon turned to anger that some people could use a newspaper article as an excuse to "unleash their anger, their frustration with other aspects of their life".

A prominent Ugandan politician has urged all parliaments in African countries to set up science and technology committees to increase the effectiveness with which science and technology are integrated into economic and social development. The suggestion was made this week by Amuriat Oboi Patrick, the chair of a science and technology commission set up last year by the parliament of Uganda to do precisely that.

The Benetech Initiative, a Silicon Valley nonprofit, has announced the release of The Martus Human Rights Bulletin System, an open source technology tool designed to assist human rights organisations in collecting, safeguarding, organising and disseminating information about human rights abuses. Currently, much of the violation and abuse information gathered by grassroots human rights groups is lost to confiscation, destruction, or neglect, making it difficult or impossible for prosecutors, truth commissions and others to use the information as evidence to hold the perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable for many of their crimes. The Martus software enables grassroots NGOs to securely store their records on off-site servers with easy-to-use software, preserving crucial evidence for research, investigation and prosecutions.

A unique gathering of parliamentarians and journalists from 11 Southern African Development Community countries has reached a remarkable decision - to call on their governments to repeal legislation which restricts the freedom of the media and freedom of expression and offends human rights generally.

The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) says it is "imperative" that the private media should be tenacious in investigating seemingly harmless government policies such as the intention to establish information kiosks in rural areas. The MMPZ says the kiosks could curtail citizens' right to access information of their choice, says the MMPZ in its latest Weekly Update, which also deals with wrangles around local government and food shortages.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) NGO Gender Strategies Working Group (WN-GSWG) is pleased to announce the structure and corresponding schedule of the [email protected] discussion, an electronic mailing list that is one of the group's efforts in strategising and organising women's participation in the WSIS process.

Fahamu, in association with the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, will be offering courses specifically designed to meet the needs of non-profit human rights and advocacy organisations in the SADC region (Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe). Developed together with international and regional experts, seven courses will be run in the course of the next 8 months. Fundraising and resource mobilisation may be a high priority on your list, but in the kind of context you are operating in, the prospects of raising sufficient funds might not be so good. In order to be effective - in order to bring about equity and justice - you need to be able to effectively fundraise and mobilise your resources, and effect change. And yet many of you are not able to do this. That's what this course is for.

Vincent Matovu, managing editor of the local Luganda-language weekly "Mazima", has been held on remand in Luzira prison since 6 January 2003, in connection with the publication of two articles concerning the war between rebel groups and government forces in the north of the country.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has written to all the delegations taking part in the Ivory Coast peace talks being held in Linas-Marcoussis (south of Paris) between 15 and 24 January 2003, asking them to raise the issue of the media in the Ivory Coast. The organisation urges the political parties and rebel movements present to make a real commitment to establishing a freer and more responsible press in the country.

Concerns are being expressed over the reports that the International Telecommunications Union plans to propose at the WSIS summit in December 2003 the creation of an international cyberspace treaty to set forth basic rules on Internet taxation, copyright protection and crime prevention. Join the WSIS PrepCom 1 Mailing List (https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/wsis-prep1/) to find out more and discuss the issue.

What's a web blog? What do web blogs do? How can I blog? How can blogging benefit my organisation? Learn all you need to know to become a blogger by clicking on the link below.

Ernest Mungwari, who runs one of Zimbabwe's biggest transport companies, Tenda Transport Private Limited is reported to have hired thugs to beat up Brian Mangwende, The Daily News bureau chief, in the eastern border city of Mutare.

Aid Workers Exchange is a weekly e-mail bulletin for knowledge sharing amongst field personnel working in humanitarian relief and international development. It covers a wide variety of topics with the format alternating between questions/responses and short, practical articles. Visit their web site if you would like to join.

Balancing Act’s News Update covers connectivity developments in Africa and this week goes out to 5496 subscribers in government, the private sector, civil society and education. It has subscribers in almost all African countries and its web site has regularly recorded over 8000 individual visits a month. Visit their web site for the current issue, back issues or if you would like to subscribe.

A famine is raging through southern Africa--a famine that Doctors Without Borders has called among the worst in Africa in the past decade. The international relief organization CARE reports that the famine "is largely the result of one of the worst droughts in a decade" and that "severe hunger--even starvation--threatens millions, particularly among the most vulnerable: children, the elderly, and pregnant and nursing women" in Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This is occurring against the backdrop of an AIDS epidemic in Africa that has claimed 25 million lives and counting, leaving behind about 14 million orphans. It's a tragic story, full of suffering, especially of children; it's also a story of the heroism of those who relentlessly struggle against the odds under the harshest conditions. But it's not good television, apparently, shows this analysis of how major news networks have covered the story.

Judge Augusto Paulino has set Friday 31 January as the date for the verdict and sentencing of the six men accused of the murder of Carlos Cardoso. The final day of the trial ran into the early evening, as the three prosecution lawyers and five defence lawyers gave their final statements, and three of the defendants also gave final statements. Carlos Cardoso was murdered "because he was a journalist who denounced abuses, who did not shut up, who would not forget any matter, who insisted on following what he regarded as most important, and who would not allow any of the illegalities he had written about to fall into oblivion," declared the Cardoso family lawyer, Lucinda Cruz, in her final statement.

The Associated Newspapers Group has lodged a constitutional challenge of sections of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. This requires media houses to be registered by the Media and Information Commission appointed by the Minister of Information.

In a move that signals the beginning of the harassment and arrests of publishers and journalists over non-compliance with the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, officers from the Criminal Investigations Department visited the publisher of The Sun newspaper, and requested that he produce his registration certificate.