While some Americans put off getting back to work in earnest until after Labor Day, President Obama has already hit the ground running. His eight days of golf with buddies and bike rides with his family on the Massachusetts resort island of Martha’s Vineyard ended abruptly Sunday night when he returned to the White House. Confronting him now is an unusually large and difficult array of issues. And although more than three years remain in his presidency, what he does – or doesn’t do – to address them could go a long way toward determining his presidential legacy.

Neither Al Jazeera English nor the Arabic network have a full-time ombudsperson, such as the CBC’s standards editor or the New York Times’s public editor Margaret Sullivan. For its part, Al Jazeera America has made copious public announcements about glitzy hires but has hired no full-time audience advocate. Al Jazeera America needn’t feel sheepish; Fox and MSNBC have no ombuds listed among their editorial staffs, and neither responded to calls and emails as of this writing.

Gary Knell, who has headed NPR for less than two years, is departing to become president of the National Geographic Society...That leaves the nation's flagship public radio syndicate without a chief executive for the second time in two years. Knell's predecessor, Vivian Schiller, was forced to resign in the spring of 2011 after a series of damning allegations about NPR's liberal bias, which she had seemingly fueled with injudicious statements and decisions, including the firing of Juan Williams.

A collaboration between USC Annenberg, the David and Dana Dornsife College and Price School of Public Policy sent a group of USC students to study shifting political, social and economic landscapes in Cuba for the second consecutive summer. Under the direction of Journalism Professor Roberto Suro and USC Dornsife Professor Pamela Starr, 25 students from an array of disciplines — public relations, public diplomacy, specialized journalism, strategic communications and international relations — spent one month immersed in research and investigation of all things Cuba.

The 'black sheep' of global broadcasting has finally managed to unlock the American TV market's tightly guarded doors. Beginning with a footprint of 48 million U.S. households it is making not an easy but a promising entrance. During its 17 years of existence, the Qatari media outlet has been equally vilified and praised for its editorial guidelines and news coverage. Conversations around it would always reflect feelings of hatred or worship; either or both.

It’s high time for the United States to cut off its $1.3 billion in aid to Egypt as the military regime cracks down violently on protesters, Sen. John McCain argued Sunday. The Arizona Republican added the U.S. has lost its credibility in the region after failing to follow its own law that requires suspending aid to states overtaken by a military coup–though the U.S. has not officially described the recent regime change in Egypt as a coup.

Opinions among lawmakers remained split on Sunday over whether the US should cut off or suspend aid to Egypt. The US spends roughly $1.5 billion a year on assistance to Egypt with much of it going to financing the purchase of US military equipment. Calls to cut off or suspend this aid has been growing since the Egyptian military's crackdown against supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. The violence has so far killed more than 750 people.

As the Egyptian military continues its bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and other protesters, U.S. President Barack Obama is facing a dwindling range of options for dealing with the crisis. Obama has, so far, refused to cut off U.S. aid to Egypt's interim government. The president has made it clear that his administration is rethinking its dealings with Egypt's military.