The Sun announced Monday it will launch a prepaid MasterCard to help its readers “combat the growing problem of debt.”

The prepaid MasterCard, which allows readers to spend only the amount of money they have loaded onto it, is a marketing push in association with Newcastle Building Society and Tuxedo Money Solutions.

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Although 515 million newspapers are sold globally each day and more people around the world are reading newspapers than ever before, the battle between print and new media have caused print sales in Europe and the United States to drop five percent, newspaper specialist Irwin Manoim told the Flux Trends Review 2007 in Johannesburg Friday.

Although developing countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Turkey and Korea are seeing the newspaper industry thrive, newspapers are not pushing to be as creative as rivals in other industries, reported BizCommunity, the online media partner for the event.

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In an effort to improve primary education and help teachers use its Newspapers in Education programme, the Daily Monitor has extended the program to the eastern region of Uganda.

More than 200 teachers were trained last week on how to use newspapers in their classrooms to bring out creativity in students while giving them more of a quality education.

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Making progress in digital acquisition, WPP has acquired Los Angeles-based interactive agency Schematic. The amount of the deal is undisclosed.

Schematic, led by Trevor Kaufman, has an impressive client list across a range of digital media. It developed CNN’s Pipeline video player, the newly designed ITV.com and the all-important development of its ad-funded media player. Schematic generated annual revenue of $29.6 million as of March.

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Indian newspaper Divya Bhaskar has launched the afternoon daily Gujarati tabloid DB Gold, with target readership of businessmen and women, industrialists and traders in Surat.

The tabloid's initial print run of 80,000 copies has only been circulated in Surat, but the Bhaskar Group has stated it expects circulation to reach one lakh, or 100,000, in the next few months, and four lakhs, or 400,000 in the near future, agencyfaqs has reported.

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By embracing technologies and innovations, such as creating online newspapers and sending headlines by SMS, Kenyan newspapers have increased their sales.

Pamela Howard-Reguindin, field director of the Library of Congress Office in Nairobi, told the recent World Library and Information Congress in Durban that the Daily Nation and Standard, Kenya's main newspapers papers, have “realised they must adopt new technology or fall into oblivion as has happened with some of their competitors."

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Should either company decide to terminate the $5.2 billion merger deal, Dow Jones & Co. would have to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation $165 million, according to a regulatory filing revealed Monday.

The fee imposed on Dow Jones, should News Corp.'s takeover bid not go through, was revealed in a filing made in connection with shareholder meetings to complete the merger.

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