This 2-day course will enable participants to create a basic website, maintain their organisations' websites - add content to existing pages, add new pages, adapt a site's design, and develop the content and structure of a website.

As a public policy researcher or analyst, are you able to describe a problem meaningfully, eliminate irrelevant material, say it with numbers, and focus on the central, critical factors? This course is meant to assist you in defining policy problems in a way that eliminates ambiguity.

Chapel & York's email-Information Service helps you find the resources you need from amongst the vast amounts of information available for charities, non-profits, & NGOs on-line. The focus is on new funding information, and international and cross-boarder funding.

The East African reports that the communications sector in Uganda is growing rapidly. According to the National Information and Communication Technology Policy, the number of mobile phone subscribers in Uganda grew from 3,500 in 1996 to the current total of 360,000.

Clay Shirky makes some interesting observations about telecommunications myths in the developing world."Something incredibly good is happening in parts of the world with dynamic economies, and that is what people concerned with the digital divide should be thinking about. If the world's poor are to be served by better telecommunications infrastructure, there are obvious things to be done."

To ensure that ICTs assume prominence in the mass media, the Ghana Institute of Information Technology (GIIT), in association with the International Institute of ICT Journalism, with support from the Ghana Journalists Association, is organizing the first National Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) seminar for Journalists working in Ghana. This landmark event will take place on 18th July 2002 at Busy Internet, to be attended by 60 selected members of the Ghana Journalists Association.

RSF has expressed serious concern after the arrest of Hassan Bility, editor-in-chief of the private weekly "The Analyst". "The newspaper is well known for its highly critical attitude towards President Charles Taylor, and we hope that the accusation of 'plotting against the President' is not a pretext for silencing a journalist who is very critical of those in power," said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard in a letter to Liberian Information Minister Reginald Goodridge. "We are concerned that this may be a witch hunt against journalists who criticise government policies," he added.

Foreign and local journalists in Tanzania were barred from interviewing the visiting British Secretary of State for International Development, Ms Claire Short soon after arriving in Dar es Salaam. Short arrived at the Dar es Salaam International Airport (DIA) amid tight security and a total media blackout over her visit in which airport security officials said they were acting on orders from above. Even local members of the press working with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Reuters, AFP and The EastAfrican did not get any opportunity to interact with the visitor.

A university don, Prof. Ralph Akinfeleye, in Abuja advocated the total deregulation of the broadcast industry in Nigeria to allow for media pluralism. Akinfeleye said at a national workshop for senior radio journalists organised by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and UN Population Fund that "it is through absolute deregulation of the broadcast industry that different shades of opinion can be freely expressed".

The ongoing police repression of opposition MDC activity under the Public Order and Security Act continues to highlight the polarity of the media, with the privately owned press viewing the law and the repression as a paranoid, unconstitutional government clampdown on Zimbabweans' democratic rights to their freedom of expression, assembly and association. The government controlled media continued to reflect the official line, reporting and justifying the upsurge in violent police activity against perceived opponents in the context that government was protecting the public from a planned "violent" MDC uprising against a legitimate government.

Four people, including a journalist, were arrested on Monday and were being held incommunicado by security authorities in Liberia on suspicion of associating with the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), Amnesty International (AI) reported.

Organizations that are able to attract and successfully manage volunteers have the ability to ramp up their capacity without incurring the cost and responsibility of staffing for every need.

By African standards, Swaziland (with just over a million people) is a tiny
country. However, with 20,000 internet subscribers it has reached a market size that is larger than some of its bigger brothers. Terence Sibiya looks at how the market operates and its future potential.

April 2002 First Monday. A new report asks does the Internet increase or decrease the risk of a communication breakdown during a crisis. It concludes that while the Internet limits access to certain kinds of information and increases the spread of rumours, hoaxes, false information, and bias, it also decentralises information sources, enables personal journalism, accelerates the spread of information, acts as a watchdog on official information, creates global archives, and establishes virtual communities. [Drum Beat 151]

President Yoweri Museveni's press secretary Mary Karooro Okurut has said the media is not doing enough to cover children's issues. Okurut made a passionate appeal to the media to come out and play a more active role in the fight against child abuse and neglect.

Aid agencies have rounded furiously on the world's richest countries, describing the G8's much-vaunted rescue plan for Africa as a squandered opportunity and "recycled peanuts".
Tony Blair hailed the action plan from the west's leading industrial nations as a "real significant step forward", but the blueprint was strongly criticised for failing to provide the Marshall plan for Africa the prime minister promised at last year's summit in Genoa.

The Group of Eight (G-8) summit being held in Kananaskis, a ski hamlet about 100km west of Calgary, has stirred a wave of interest about Africa in the Canadian media.

A news agency in Kenya has moved to court to challenge the law requiring publishers to execute bonds of Sh1 million to run newspapers and magazines. Kenya Eyes News Services wants a Constitutional Court to declare the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Act 2002 illegal.

The government has been told to provide security for journalists covering the coming General Election. Journalists from both public and private media organisations complained that they were being harassed and intimidated by State officials and political party operatives even before the elections are called.

Passengers aboard the doomed train that crashed in Tanzania had to endure a 20 minute roller coaster ride to death. Early estimates of a death toll of more than 200 proved modest. Tanzania's worst rail disaster has claimed more than 300 lives, it was feared last night.