Features

Australia's newspapers, radio and TV stations are set for a major shake-up that critics warn will reduce diversity and make more viewers pay for sport, Australian Associated Press (AAP) has reported. Communications Minister Helen Coonan used a speech in Sydney Tuesday to outline the federal government's planned changes to media laws and its vision for the new digital media era. SETTING THE AGENDA

Two journalists were murdered within the space of 24 hours in Mexico last week. Jaime Arturo Olvera Bravo, a freelance photographer and former correspondent for the daily La Voz de Michoacán, was killed on 9 March in La Piedad in the central state of Michoacán, and Ramiro Téllez Contreras, a local radio reporter and police station switchboard operator, was killed the next day in Nuevo Laredo in

Uganda has refused to let a Canadian journalist working for the Economist re-enter the east African country because of concerns about his reporting, Reuters has reported. For months, government media authorities did not renew the press accreditation of 34-year-old Blake Lambert, who had lived in Uganda for three years. PREZ'S UP: Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni (R), with his wife Janet (L)

An editor has been sentenced to one year in prison on a charge of publishing "false news" in a 2002 report attributed to the BBC, which claimed that Ethiopia was training rebels in neighbouring Eritrea. Abraham Gebrekidan, who edited the now-defunct Amharic-language weekly Politika, was immediately jailed on March 8, several local sources told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). THE

More than three months have elapsed since the assassination of Lebanese editor Gebran Tueni by the government is yet to appoint a judge to investigate the murder even as an award has been instituted to honour a newspaper publisher or editor in the Arab world who demonstrates free press values. TUENI'S DAUGHTER: Nayla Tueni, daughter of slain anti-Syrian journalist and legislator Gibran Tueni, in

Yet another journalist has been handed down a prison sentence for defamation. On March 7, a court in Giza near Cairo convicted Amira Malash, a reporter for the independent weekly Al-Fagr, of defaming Judge Attia Mohammad Awad in an article she wrote in July 2005 alleging that he had taken bribes. WATCH OUT: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and Egypt President Hosni Mubarak brief the media

The police in Belarus Thursday turned the heat on journalists trying to cover an attack by plainclothes policemen on an opposition candidate in the ensuing presidential polls. BAD PRESIDENT: Belarus security agents, one of them in a riot police uniform, foreground left, jostling with Alexander Kozulin in Minsk, March 2. Security agents beat and detained Kozulin, an opposition candidate in this

Nosir Zokirov, a correspondent for the Uzbek service of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was released from prison on Sunday after serving a six-month sentence for insulting a security officer, the broadcaster reported. BLOODBATHED: The Uzbekistan government of President Islam Karimov has pursued independent journalists since foreign media carried news of the May

A reporter of Colombian newspaper Vanguardia Liberal has been forced to flee home after receiving death threats for reporting on abuses by right-wing militants. Jenny Manrique fled Bucaramanga in the western province of Santander in January. ALWAYS ON GUARD: Police officers stand guard in Rivera, 150 miles southwest of Bogota, Colombia, February 28. Eight town council officials were killed in a

Masked policemen shut down Kenya's second largest media group early Thursday in Nairobi, two days after three Kenyan journalists were detained without charge for a story about the country's president, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. BURNT: A Kenyan reads a burnt copy of the Standard newspaper at the printing press in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, March 2. Masked gunmen raided Kenya's second