A reporter tagged in a Facebook image that mocked the Palestinian president said Saturday he faces trial for insulting a public figure, raising concerns about freedom of speech in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

With nearly half the U.S. population on Facebook, the social network’s omnipresence is almost passe. In Asia, however, the social network is still exploding, and with no end in sight.

Mr. Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old Facebook chief executive and co-founder, may be the man of the moment in the United States and much of the rest of the online world. But here in Japan, one of the globe’s most wired nations, few people have heard of him.

Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, was gunned down by one of his bodyguards today in a crowded marketplace -- the highest-profile killing in Pakistan since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the latest blow to the country's beleaguered civilian government.

When I came to Brussels just over three years now, European Politicians were not on Facebook, election ads were not made or broken by one’s twitter adeptness and no one in the European Commission had been told that any of these should be an option.

A young French Member of the European Parliament is leading the charge. Advocates hope that the increased use of social networking will get younger Europeans interested in what happens in Brussels.

Women walking the streets of Cairo have long endured pervasive sexual harassment, with little support. But now a group of independent volunteers is introducing a web-based project to help women fight back against the abuse that often leaves them feeling powerless.

In leading foreign ministries the digital age is producing dramatic change. Every day a single American diplomat communicates with more than a quarter of a million Indonesians using Facebook. Australia's diplomatic service, by contrast, doesn't even use social media in Indonesia.