The Minister of Information and Publicity Professor Jonathan Moyo and his Permanent Secretary Gorge Charamba have launched a scathing attack against the Financial Gazette and private media journalists for what the two called "treasonous" and "anti government" reporting. The two have warned that the government will not brook any criticism and appropriate measures will be taken against "errant" journalists.

Blessing Zulu, a reporter with the Zimbabwe Independent and The Daily News Chief Reporter, Pedzisai Ruhanya, were threatened by police officers when they went to cover the funeral of opposition Member of Parliament Learnmore Jongwe, who died in remand prison on Tuesday 2 October.

Joseph Mwale, a member of the Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) has declared Chimanimani, a plantation and farming region in the east of Zimbabwe, a no-go area for the private media. The move has forced a private company, Radar Holdings, which was planning a media tour of its plantations that were gutted by fire, to shelve the tour.

The ICT and youth employment debate should have been stressing that a focus on access to digital technology distorts the reality of the problem. Instead, the debate should focus on the knowledge divide. The lack of access to low cost, relevant and reliable information is the real issue, as opposed to the actual form of technology used to deliver such information.

Yvonne Vera's Nehanda (1993) signalled the presence of new and remarkable writing in Zimbabwe, and her four subsequent novels have confirmed her stature as one of the most important African novelists of the 1990s. Her art is alert to public life; and manifests the decisive moments of Zimbabwe's anti-colonial resistance, the growth of the township culture and the competing demands of the city and the rural home. This work brings together critics from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Britain, the Caribbean and the United States, demonstrating through a diversity of approaches the complex beauty of Vera's work. It shows how Vera expanded the formal possibilities of the African novel by placing the experiences of women at the centre of literature, and in so doing, retold and recreated Zimbabwe's history and imaginative life.

A journalist from Eritrea is one of the awardees of the International Press Freedom Awards 2002. Fesshaye Yohannes is a writer and co-founder of Setit, a popular Eritrean newspaper. He was imprisoned last September with nine other journalists after authorities banned all of Eritrea's independent newspapers for "jeopardizing national unity." He is being held incommunicado without charges.

Internews Network and Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria are currently accepting applications for the Project Manager position of the Local Voices program.

Two police officers from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) stormed the newsroom of "The Chronicle" newspaper in Lilongwe, Malawi's capital, on 22 October 2002. They demanded to see reporter Levison Mwase, who was not in the newsroom at the time.

The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) has welcomed most of the changes made by the South African Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications to the controversial Broadcasting Amendment Bill. This followed public hearings where numerous organisations criticised the Bill for attempting to transform the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) from a public broadcaster to a state broadcaster by increasing its accountability to the Minister of Communications.

Advocacy is an important part of development programming, and NGOs in the South and East are increasingly looking to develop their advocacy strategies and capacity. This course is designed for the staff of Northern NGOs working in programme management and support (desk or field) and in policy departments.

Human rights workers should be globally feted and supported. Instead, however, they are chronically underfunded, goaded to justify every detail of their work, and threatened with dire harm. For these reasons, human rights work requires free software.

There has been a lot of research (www.itu.int/ipdc) into the root causes of these high connectivity costs and associated obstacles to reducing them. However it does not appear to address the subject of the reverse subsidies, nor does it appear to suggest concrete steps for reversing the situation.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has selected the proposal of the Internet Society (ISOC) for the operation of the .org top-level domain, beginning January 1, 2003. The Public Interest Registry (PIR), established by ISOC, will be the registry operator. EPIC President Marc Rotenberg was named as one of the founding board members of PIR.

Translate.org.za is making great strides forward under the banner of the Zuza Software Foundation, translating computer software into the eleven official languages of South Africa. Current languages include Xhosa, Zulu, Venda, Northern Sotho,Siswati and Tswana. Read more in their October update...

It's not really surprising that many nonprofit organizations aren't doing everything they should to keep their computer systems secure. Technology can be quite complicated and intimidating, and even in a strong economy many nonprofit organizations can't afford the expense.

The Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List is an information service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa). Each week subscribers to this free e-mail service receive an average of two-to-three policy-relevant documents relevant to African policy issues, with a particular focus on broad continent-wide issues with implications for international and U.S. policy. Documents distributed include documents selected for reposting from other sources, as well as publications produced by Africa Action.

The scanty media coverage of HIV-Aids in the absence of controversy was a failure of responsibility to the public, Joel Netshitenze, Government Communications Information Service CEO, said in a panel discussion in Johannesburg last Saturday to mark Media Freedom Day, the SABC reported.

The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was an unacceptable piece of legislation, a meeting of the National Journalists and Media Workers Meeting jointly organised by the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, Foreign Correspondents Association, Federation of African Media Women in Zimbabwe, The Media Monitoring Project and the Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe has resolved.

Deep inside the warm green interior of Guinea, centered in the frontal lobe of West Africa, field personnel in the widely scattered village-towns of Dabola, Kissidougou and Nzerekore now enjoy access to regular internet e-mail, directly from their desktops. Here we have bridged the digital divide, and there isn't a telephone line or satellite dish in sight. Instead we are moving the mail over distances of hundreds of miles--over jungled mountains and high palmy savannahs--through wavelengths of high-frequency (HF) radio. Our project is called Radio E-mail, and here is its story.

Two families were evicted from council houses in Azalea Road, Steurhof this morning. The families are long-term residents in the area who were forcibly removed during the Apartheid era. Now, in the post-Apartheid era, they again face losing their homes.