Bogota’s public television station called on the Organization of American States (OAS) on Tuesday to intercede on its behalf amid threats to its executives, weeks after public appeals to Colombian national authorities. 

If you thought all Russians were bloodthirsty lunatics hellbent on starting World War III, you would be wrong. On Saturday, tens of thousands of liberal Muscovites lined up to pass through metal detectors and march down a route lined with police and barriers in an effort to convince Putin to give peace a chance.

Public diplomacy matters, but it is no substitute for policy. As First Lady Michelle Obama prepares to travel to China, she should consider weaving some policy into what appears to be almost entirely a week-long public diplomacy push. With her mother and two daughters in tow, the first lady will be visiting educational institutions and historical sites and discussing education in the United States and China.

For journalists in Ukraine, safety has become a leading concern. Radio Svoboda, the Ukrainian branch of Radio Free Europe, had been covering the protests (in Ukrainian) since they started in November.

As tensions spiral between Russia and the West over the crisis in Ukraine, the Obama administration is denouncing Moscow's imposition of new restrictions on independent Russian media. The State Department on Friday said it was "deeply troubled" by dramatic new curbs on press freedom that it said make it easier for the government to spread "patently false" information.

The United Arab Emirates has started to ban its citizens from working at Qatari media outlets following its recent decision to withdraw its ambassador from Doha. The UAE government has requested a number of prominent anchors to terminate their contracts with the Doha-based Bein Sports network (formerly Al-Jazeera Sports).

Remember the Sochi Olympics? Yeah. Me, neither. There’s been so much focus on Ukraine, we almost forget that just a short time ago we were talking about the “twizzles” of ice dancing. Those were good times. The Sochi Olympics were widely considered a success. They helped introduce a new image of Russia to the world.

Russia invaded Ukraine over the weekend, justifying its incursion by claming it needed to protect Crimea’s ethnic Russian population from supposed neo-Nazi extremists.  This was pure propaganda, of course—Vladmir Putin has been keen to annex land that used to be part of Russia, as he did in Georgia in 2008, and seems to think that the Ukrainian army will and should immediately surrender to the Russian one.