Over the past few years, Facebook has come under scrutiny a number of times for its seeming hypocrisy on what types of groups it deems inappropriate. Although the site's terms of service (TOS) ban everything from nudity, to speech deemed hateful, to using a pseudonym to open an account, they are selectively enforced.

The TOS appear only to be enforced when enough users report a group as inappropriate, and once a group is removed, its creators often find it impossible to get it back. Users whose personal accounts are removed sometimes create a new account, only to find it deleted again soon afterward.

Moroccan activist Kacem El Ghazzali was recently subjected to Facebook's TOS when a group he had created, entitled Jeunes pour la séparation entre Religion et Enseignement (youth for the separation between religion and education), was promptly removed. El Ghazzali emailed Facebook, but received no response. Two days later, his personal account had been deleted from Facebook as well. He says that while the group was live, he received emails from Muslims who opposed the group, as well as other groups he had created.

El Ghazzali's group, and his account, both appear to have been well within both U.S. law and Facebook's TOS. Why then, did Facebook delete them? Was it under pressure from another country's government, or did enough people simply report the group that Facebook automatically removed it? In any case, why doesn't Facebook offer recourse for its users to report accounts and groups removed in error, as other sites such as YouTube and Blogger do?

Since his account and groups do not appear to be in violation of Facebook's TOS, it seems that Facebook is now policing speech, possibly at the behest of a foreign government.

International shortwave radio monitors have confirmed that VOA broadcasts in the Amharic language are being jammed in Ethiopia.

The static began February 22 on all five VOA shortwave frequencies aimed at East Africa in the 25 and 31-meter shortwave bands.

The other foreign broadcast heard in Ethiopia, the German government's Deutsche Welle Amharic language program, also reports experiencing some interference, in the past few days.

VOA and Deutsche Welle were jammed around the time of the last parliament election in 2005, and again before the 2008 nationwide local elections. The next crucial parliament vote is scheduled for May 23.

Ethiopian officials have often described VOA's Amharic Service as the voice of the opposition, saying its broadcasts reveal an anti-government bias.

The Voice of America is a multi-media international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,500 hours of news and other programming every week in 49 languages.

Ivory Coast has suspended satellite TV news station France 24 over a headline reporting many deaths during a protest, the government said on Wednesday, despite the fact that five people were killed.

The National Council for Audiovisual Communication scrambled France 24's signal late on Monday and it has not been restored.

The council (CNCA) President Franck Kouassi told Reuters the station would remain suspended until further notice.

Sharia police ordered the closure of an annual music festival funded and organised by the French embassy in northern Nigeria at the weekend.

We have banned the music festival for the reason that we were not notified and our permission was not sought, Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, head of the film censorship board in the northern Kano region, told AFP.

The French embassy said they had been told they could not stage the event at the local French cultural centre as they did not have prior authorisation.

Following a notification by the Kano state censorship board, the Kano festival of music is cancelled the French embassy said in a statement emailed to AFP.