On July 31, Venezuelan regulators revoked the broadcast rights of 34 radio stations, deepening a rift between President Hugo Chavez's government and the private media. Diosdado Cabello, who heads Venezuela's telecommunications regulatory agency, said some of the stations failed to update their registrations, while others held licences granted to an operator who is now deceased.

When the employees of Hewlett-Packard checked their mail box on June 30, they got a bit of a shock.

William Shatner--or Captain Kirk of Star Trek-- had left each one of them a pre-recorded message, politely expressing his regret that the computer company had failed to keep its eco-promises.

An Australian documentary that premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in July has ignited a controversy with its claims on slavery in the refugee camps of western Sahara. The protagonist has denounced the film for portraying her as a slave. The 80-minute film, by Sydney-based Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw, is set in refugee camps in south-west Algeria, where 160,000 Saharawi people have lived since the 1975 Moroccan invasion.