It's now 40 days since BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was abducted in Gaza and all week - amid unsubstantiated rumours that he had been killed - growing numbers of individuals and institutions have joined those lobbying for his safe release. The BBC has collected some 40,000 online signatories to its petition and today we've added the link to the Comment is free front page for anyone who wants to sign up.
Murray Armstrong, the regular writer of the Editors' blog on Cif, also mentioned it in his blog yesterday - which gives me an opportunity to remind those of you who may not have found it that the Editors' blog is there to give a sense of what goes on at Guardian morning editorial meetings, how editorial decisions are made and the events and discussions that take place.
Yesterday's debate about the contrast between the way the Virginia Tech shootings were covered by the media in comparison to the 200 or so deaths in Baghdad this week (see Roy Greenslade's blog) led to an interesting discussion (and some soul-searching) about whether the British media have in effect given up reporting Iraq - and, if so, why. Here on Cif we're constantly looking for new voices from Iraq, so if anyone finds interesting blogs/links, etc, let us know.
Coming up on Cif next week: we'll be blogging the results of the first round of the French elections on Sunday night and will start gearing up to blog the May 3 vote in England, Scotland and Wales the week after. Immediately after those elections we'll be asking you for questions to put to those politicians bidding to succeed Tony Blair and John Prescott. More details soon.
And finally ... Cif has been shortlisted for a prestigious webby award (best politics blog), alongside Guardian Unlimited (shortlisted for best newspaper on the web) and GU podcasts. The reason for blowing our own trumpet is that the awards also offer a chance for web users to have their say on who should win the People's Choice awards, which run alongside the Webby Awards themselves, so any of you who enjoy Cif enough to want to vote for us, we'd love your support, which you can register here. Winners are announced on May 1.
