Zimbabwean media practitioners have launched a self-regulatory media body for journalists despite government threats of unspecified action against them. The non-governmental Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ) launched the Media Council of Zimbabwe (MCZ) earlier this month. If MCZ members have their way, the ruling Zanu-PF will cease its stranglehold on the operations of the country's media and task this autonomous body to regulate and monitor the media independently in Zimbabwe.

They range from surgeons and scholars to illiterate refugees from some of the world's worst hellholes -- a dizzyingly varied stream of African immigrants to the United States. More than one million strong and growing, they are enlivening American cities and altering how the nation confronts its racial identity.

President Denis Sassou Nguesso's ruling party is expected to be the big winner of legislative elections on Sunday in the African republic of Congo, where opposition complaints have had little impact. Sassou Nguesso, a former Marxist army officer, has been back in controversy this week after French prosecutors started investigating allegations that he used embezzled state funds to buy luxury Paris apartments.

The Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja, Nigeria has issued a hearing notice for a suit filed against the Republic of Gambia by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) on behalf of a "disappeared" Gambian journalist, Chief Ebrima Manneh, reporter of pro-government Banjul-based "Daily Observer" newspaper.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the use of violence by members of the national police and United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) against several journalists, including Daylue Goah of the privately-owned daily "New Democrat" and Evans Ballah of "Public Agenda", during a student demonstration on 19 June 2007. Goah was seriously injured.