The Afghan lawyer defending a journalist on death row in Kabul has been bombarded with death threats urging him to drop the case.

Islamic extremists repeatedly threatened to murder Afzal Nooristani after he agreed to defend Sayed Pervez Kambaksh in his high-profile appeal.

The 23-year-old student writer was sentenced to death for circulating an article about women's rights. He was tried in a closed court, and denied a defence lawyer. His case has sparked worldwide protests.

In Afghanistan, conservative clerics have led rallies endorsing his conviction, while others have marched for his release. Most lawyers were too afraid to take his case.

I received phone calls threatening to kill me, said Mr Nooristani: I answered two of them and got lots of missed calls. But I told them they could do what they like. It didn't stop me taking the case.

More than 100,000 people have signed an online Independent petition demanding justice for Kambaksh. The United Nations' high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, have all called for justice to be done.

But speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Afghan Bar Association yesterday, Nooristani warned that the appeal was already deeply flawed, and he said it is almost impossible for Kambaksh to get a fair trial: There's no concrete evidence against him, but still the court insists on keeping him in jail and postponing the trial.

A tabloid newspaper was withdrawn from newsstands in China after running a photograph from the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters.

The photo - of two wounded young men being taken away on a rickshaw - was carried in Thursday's Beijing News.

The picture was simply captioned The Wounded, and no mention of the protests was made in the text.

But observers suggest newspaper staff could face further punishment for broaching what remains a taboo subject.

The photograph was printed alongside an interview with the Hong Kong-born American photographer Liu Xiangcheng as an example of his work. It seems most likely to have been a mistake by staff who did not realise the significance of the photo.

As soon as Chinese officials noticed, they ordered the removal of the paper from the news-stands and part of its website was blocked.

On July 7, Savva Terentyev, a Russian blogger and musician from the city of Syktyvkar, received a one-year suspended jail sentence for a comment he posted on the blog of a local journalist.

Here is a rough translation of some of the comment:

I hate cops [swear word omitted]

I don’t agree with the thesis that policemen still have the mentality of a repressive stick in the hands of the powers that be. First, they are cops. Second, their mentality isn’t still here. It’s simply ineradicable.

Once filth, always filth.  Would be great if there was an oven, similar to those in Auschwitz, in the center of every Russian city, at the main square, and there’d be a daily ceremony - or, even better, twice a day of burning a dishonest cop there. The people would be doing the burning. This would be the first step towards cleansing the society of the dirt that the thuggish cops are.

The court found Terentyev guilty of inciting enmity and publicly humiliating representatives of a social group.

Italians are protesting against proposed laws that could make investigative journalism almost impossible.

The new ‘scoundrel-laws’, as organisers of the demonstration have named them, will limit press freedom and make a mockery of Italy’s judicial system.

Ten days after winning the elections, Berlusconi threatened to ban ‘disturbing’ TV programmes, such as Annozero, a weekly current affairs show directed by Michele Santoro. Fifteen days later, two issues that had been central to his electoral campaign, the Alitalia crisis and the waste scandal, vanished from the agenda.

A month later, three new bills were proposed. The first concerned wiretaps, the second proposed suspending for a year legal proceedings in cases of crimes committed prior to 2002 (where the sentence is less then 10 years) and the third promised immunity from prosecution for the holders of the highest public office.

The bill on wiretaps includes a proposal which would make it illegal to report investigations until criminal proceedings have begun. Explaining the context of the crime and why a person has been arrested will be illegal too.

The blog Voglio Scendere claims that this bill is not designed to defend reputations since, there is already a law on defamation; nor it is really designed to prevent wiretapping, but rather it aims to prevent citizens from being fully informed about scandals taking place in the country. Moreover, to investigate allegations against a member of the Roman Catholic Church, permission would be required from the direct superior of the person investigated. This would be particularly problematic in the case of the Pope.

The proposal has caused alarm and indignation among many journalists and citizens. This is why a demonstration has been organised. Those who participate want to make the rest of Italians aware of the danger these bills pose to the very liberty of each citizen.

A Rabat court fined Hassan Rachidi, Al-Jazeera’s Morocco bureau chief, 50,000 dirhams (nearly $6,000) for maliciously publishing false news likely to disrupt public order and spread panic among people. Authorities also suspended Rachidi’s press accreditation.

The case stemmed from Al-Jazeera coverage of social unrest that shook the southern city of Sidi Ifni on June 7. The Qatar-based satellite television station quoted an NGO source that claimed people died following clashes with the police, but made it clear that official sources denied any fatality. Other local and international media outlets reported the alleged deaths, but none of those were prosecuted.

Khalid Soufiani, coordinator of Rachidi’s defense team, told CPJ that the verdict is null because it has no legal ground whatsoever. The failure of the court to grant more time to the defense team and to summon witnesses involved in the Sidi Ifny unrest, including high-ranking security officials, led the defense lawyers to walk out of the courtroom on July 4. But we will make it to the court of appeal, Soufiani said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists wrote to  the Belarus president calling on him to veto a severely restrictive draft media law, which will further curb press freedom conditions in Belarus:

The bill was adopted by the upper chamber of the Belarusian parliament on June 28 and now awaits your consideration.

The bill was rushed through parliament in a few days without ever being made public, and without due discussion, raising doubts about your government’s stated intentions to improve the work climate for the press in your country. CPJ research and interviews with local sources show that the proposed draft aims at nothing but facilitating state agencies to further crack down on Belarus’s embattled independent media outlets, and broaden the control of the state over critical news outlets and their reporters. Furthermore, despite your government’s assurances that the new law is not aimed at controlling the Internet, the bill contains provisions that enable state agencies to exercise strict control over information published on the Web.

CPJ joins the Belarusian and international media community in urging you to veto the bill. Here are the provisions we are particularly concerned about:

• Journalists’ accreditation
  
  Article 35 of the new bill gives broad power to various state agencies—on both the local and federal levels—to deny accreditation to individual journalists and their outlets on unidentified grounds. The article prohibits international journalists from working in Belarus without accreditation.
   
• Control over the Internet
  
  The crackdown on traditional mass media outlets under your administration has turned the Internet into the last refuge for independent journalists, but the proposed draft allows the government to censor the Web. The new bill equates Internet-based publications with traditional mass media outlets, making them subject to the same restrictions. In addition, Articles 11 and 17 of the bill give extra power to the Council of Ministers to single-handedly deny the registration of Web news publications, and to restrict the distribution of Internet-based information.
   
• Financing
  
  The broadly worded Article 8 bans mass media outlets from accepting money and other donations from international persons and groups, as well as from anonymous sources.
   
• Registration
  
  Article 14 requires media outlets to re-register with every technical change, such as a replacement in the founders’ board, a change of name of the media outlet, or a change in the editorial staff. The proposed draft also requires that all media outlets re-register within a year after this new law takes effect (Article 54)—a measure that grants Belarusian authorities the power to deny a license to publish to any outlet they deem undesirable on re-registration.
   
• Responsibility
  
  Under the new bill, the Ministry of Information receives broad authority to suspend media outlets; the ministry and state prosecutors are given the authority to shut down outlets permanently. These state agencies can suspend or close the outlets if they find their content to be inaccurate, defamatory, “not corresponding to reality,” or “threatening the interests of the state or the public.” The bill leaves the interpretation of these terms in the hands of state authorities.

Cameroon authorities have lifted a ban on three private broadcasters summarily closed in connection with their critical coverage in February, but police are withholding equipment seized from one station, according to local journalists and news reports.

Equinoxe Télévision, sister radio station Radio Equinoxe, and Magic FM were authorized to return to air on July 4 by Communications Minister Jean Pierre Biyiti bi Essam. However, police continued to hold the broadcasting equipment of Magic FM, a popular station and partner of international U.S. broadcaster Voice of America.

All three stations were distinguished for their pointed political coverage of a national debate on constitutional reform marred by violence, according to local journalists.

We are relieved that Equinoxe Télévision, Radio Equinoxe, and Magic FM have finally been allowed to return to air, said Tom Rhodes, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator: We call on the government to abandon such crude tactics of censorship like these arbitrary closures of media outlets, and ask that authorities to ensure that all of Magic FM’s equipment is returned immediately.

The new media and information law passed by the Ethiopian parliament this week encounters strong opposition from different media groups.

The new law bans censorship of private media and detention of journalists but retains other threats to freedom of expression.

The press, UNESCO and the  UN higher commissioner for human rights organised a workshop about the law.

Many media groups have expres
sed their deep concern and frustration: The law invokes national security as grounds for impounding materials prior to publication and distribution participants said: The law grants state prosecutors for unlimited rights to lay charges Medias as they wish even after plaintiff drops charges. The implication is to secure law-protection to government officials.

The participants have demanded ministry of information to be suspended from the authority issued to monitor Medias and they called for a neutral body to take over the authority instead.

Bulcha Demeksa, opposition chair-person for Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement to his side called the bill as “draconian”: I consider the day this bill passed as one dark day in the memory of the nation’s history.