Four years after briefly stopping off in Ghana on his way home from a Group of Eight (G-8) summit, US President Barack Obama lands in Dakar on Wednesday night at the start of his first extended visit in his current designation, to the continent of his Kenyan father’s birth. But he is expected to give Kenya a miss, as its president is under indictment from the International Criminal Court.

The BBC's aim to broadcast in North Korea for the first time has been curbed by government cuts to its budget, the corporation's director of global news has said. Peter Horrocks said airing programmes in the secretive state is still on his "wish list" but is unlikely to happen in the next year, following the £2.2m annual budget cut announced by William Hague earlier this month.

Qatar, the smallest Gulf monarchy, has become a global brand. Securing the 2022 World Cup was a PR triumph. It plans to compete to host the 2024 Olympics. It has a glittering portfolio: Harrods, the Shard, Paris St-Germain football club. Doha's Islamic art museum is a brilliant example of money in the service of high culture.

The local media's failure to provide sufficient and high-quality international news could be a result of their lack of vision, as they focus only on trivial and sensational subjects to maintain high ratings, media insiders said.

The Arab media explosion that recently has culminated in uprisings across the region springs from two interrelated sources: the growth of satellite television and the affordability of the receivers to the Arab masses, and the common language that Arabs share across state boundaries.

Some of the latest innovations on display included paper USBs, translation tools and mobile crisis intervention projects. Focal topics included use of social media, mobile phones and innovative tools for exchanging content with audiences, and tools for getting information into press-restrictive societies such as Cuba, Syria and China.