Abdullah Elshamy, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, has now been in prison for 175 days and on hunger strike for a little over two weeks. "I've lost a number of pounds. I only rely on liquids. The littlest effort makes me feel dizzy," he wrote in a letter smuggled out of his prison cell, where he isn't allowed access to pens or paper. "But it's what I feel compelled to do in order to raise awareness about the importance of freedom of speech."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's battle with hardliners in his own government broke out into the open Wednesday, with the head of the country's state-run television company temporarily preventing him from giving a live interview in Tehran.

Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics, which begins Thursday, reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests.

First, there was the abrupt resignation of a president accused by governing party politicians of allowing an overly liberal tone to news coverage. Then, his newly appointed successor immediately drew public ire when he seemed to proclaim that he would loyally toe the line of the current conservative government.

Outraged by a new Russian law that outlaws “homosexual propaganda” and by President Vladimir Putin’s recent remarks that gays who go to Sochi for the Olympic Winter Games should “stay away from children,” some gays and lesbians are planning to boycott watching the Olympics on TV.

Egyptian prosecutors said on Wednesday that they were charging 20 journalists working for the Al Jazeera television network with conspiring with a terrorist group and broadcasting false images of “a civil war that raises alarms about the state’s collapse.” The charges are the latest turn in a widening clampdown on public dissent by the military-backed government that ousted President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood six months ago.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the US might as well be on a different planet. American football’s annual crescendo is typically the country’s most watched TV show of the year, usually by a considerable margin. Last year’s edition was, by some measures, the third most viewed show in American broadcast history. But on the global stage, it’s a very different story.

Cambodian police on Monday fired smoke canisters to break up an anti-government demonstration calling for a license to be issued for an opposition TV channel. At least eight people were injured. Several hundred people gathered in the capital to press demand for a government critic to be allowed a TV license.