This week the Media Monitoring Project focuses its attention on the media coverage of the visit by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group to Zimbabwe to assess the progress being made towards the implementation of the conditions set out in the Abuja agreement signed in the Nigerian capital on September 6th between Britain and Zimbabwe. The government-controlled media launched a propaganda blitz promoting government’s insistence that it is complying with the terms of the Abuja Agreement.

Annual prize of a $15,000 cash award and an expense-paid trip to Washington DC presented by The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Novartis. Journalists from around the world are invited to compete in competition for excellence in international journalism.

Fellowship provides $20,000, for study-leave over a 4 month period. Applicants should be mature journalists interested in studies or programmes that benefit the community at large and at the same time enhance their competence.

People are often surprised when they hear about CDRA's monthly "Homeweek" because it is unusual for an NGO to devote that much time to learning. Many NGOs have been inspired to develop their own kind of homeweeks and sought our support in their design. So we often get asked to write up something about this homeweek – its role, what it consists of and how it works. This Nugget attempts to provide this, certainly not as a blueprint but as an example of what we have experienced as effective internal organisational practice.

Alfrid Tabban, Albino Okely and Nhial Bol have been charged and released on bail with waging war against the state, provoking hatred against or amongst the sexes and defamation by the authorities in Khartoum. The Sudanese Victims of Torture Group requests your help putting pressure on the Government of Sudan to ensure Mr Tabban, Okely and Bol have full access to legal representation and fair trial; to end to the harassment of Sudanese journalists by security forces and to abolish all legislation that violates Sudan’s obligations under international human rights laws.

An international security monitoring group (CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center) warned that Internet attacks are expected to double this year. Read NetAction's useful guide to Internet security and data integrity.

NICRO is an organisation that works for a Safer South Africa. Our Provincial Office is situated in Durban, although the work of the organisation stretches throughout KwaZulu Natal. A confident and extrovert person is required to carry out our fund-raising marketing and media work.

World Lecture Hall (WLC) is a portal to free online course materials from around the world. Try the advanced search function if you are looking for something specific.

There are alternatives to Microsoft software. Many people are sceptical of them, and so they should be. Can you use it? Can you maintain it? What about applications for email, web browsing and word processing - are they available and do they work? This site presents sensible answers and is very interactive. It lists options and claims not to have a biased agenda, but simply to provide information for those who wish or need to use another product.

Dan Gillmor interviews Tim Berners-Lee on Microsoft's latest "browser tricks". Microsoft has not made a smart move by making the MSN web site accessible to Internet Explorer users only, explains Berners-Lee. It flies in the face of the spirit of the Web, which is open communication and information sharing. The interview contains advice to web designers/ coders and this page has links to many other weblogs.

The Hot Topics series provides a free sampling of the resources in Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) and the Internet Database Service (IDS). The 30 topics span subjects in the humanities, engineering, environmental policy, and medicine.

A boon to teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL), this database of ESL-related educational resources comes from the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, with funding from the US Department of Education's Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA) and Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI).

SAGE Publications is providing free access through the intermediary, ingenta, to over 250 electronic journals during the months of November and December 2001. This includes full text files for the 2001 subscription year, as well as back files for 2000 and 1999 where available. If you already have an account with ingenta, access will automatically be available to all SAGE's journals at no charge during these two months. If you do not have an ingenta account, then simply register with ingenta at their website: www.ingenta.com. Access will then be available to all SAGE's journals at no charge, direct from the relevant journal page on this website.

e-Readiness assessments and e-strategies seem to be all the rage at the moment. In an understandable desire to try and understand the impact of ICT on their countries, African governments (and their external funders) commission these documents to help provide a focus for action. Sadly all too often these studies are long on aspirations and short on implementation and action. The more complicated task of knitting together active initiators of a strategy in government, the private sector and civil society is sometimes overlooked or avoided. Margareet Visser of Durban-based Bridges.org provides an overview of a field littered with forgotten studies.

On October 15th, an on-line discussion was launched to explore Global Development Network's new global research project theme "Understanding Reform". The purpose of this
on-line discussion is to give GDN members the opportunity to provide input into the process of narrowing and specifying the scope of the project.

Telecollaboration is a non-profit telecollaborative organization that enables teachers and young people to work together online through internet technologies.

"Research and Evaluation in the Human Rights Field" (7 January-5 April 2002) and "Human Rights Advocacy" (4 February-3 May 2002)

South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) party backbencher Doreen Sioka unleashed a barrage of criticism during the National Assembly, accusing the media of being a bunch of "liars, distorters and creators of conflict," "The Namibian" reported on Monday 22 October.