The Iranian government has ordered the country's leading reformist daily newspaper to shut down Monday, less than three months after it was allowed to begin publishing again.

Although the government said it closed Shargh, which means “East,” for interviewing a poet who disputes Islamic views on relationships between men and women, Shargh's editor said it was an excuse to silence one of the few reformist outlets remaining in Iran.

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Seven Network has increased its stake in West Australian Newspapers from 16.1 percent to 17.3 percent, becoming the dominant investor of WAN.

The television broadcaster is the first company to take advantage of the Australian Federal Government’s new media ownership laws this year.

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The publishing group Controlinveste will launch a new free daily, Global Notícias in September.

Global Notícias will have 24 pages and a circulation of 150,000, available first in Lisbon, by home delivery and in public places, according to Newspaper Innovation.

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A new free afternoon Hebrew daily newspaper will premiere this week in Israel.

Metro will attempt to carve out a place for itself in the Hebrew journalism world dominated by paid morning newspapers like Yediot, Aharonot, Ma'ariv and Haaretz. The newspaper will go to press at noon and distribute papers between 2 and 5 p.m.

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The Santa Barbara Daily Sound has turned Monday over 144 unpublished photographs taken during a gang fight that ended in the stabbing death of a teenager.

The paper's editor and publisher, Jeramy Gordon, turned the March 14 photos over to Superior Court, calling it “a sad day for journalism and for our rights as Americans.”

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Newspaper companies are utilising the Internet to expand their reach, a recent study has found.

“American Newspapers and the Internet; Threat or Opportunity?" by Bivings Research has found that in 2007, 92 percent of America’s top 100 newspaper Web sites now have video on their sites, which grew significantly from 61 percent in 2006.

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The New Castle News has announced in an article Monday it will challenge in court the police seizure of a newsroom computer that police say a reporter used to record a phone conversation with two public officials.

Northwest Lawrence Regional Police got a search warrant and took the computer July 25 when a reporter, who is married to the town's police chief, told the chief an interview he had given to another reporter was recorded without the chief's knowledge.

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