Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament has passed a draft law decriminalizing libel.

The owner of the pro-opposition «Maidan.kz» newspaper in Kyrgyzstan has been arrested.

Moscow police say an investigation has been launched into the stabbing of a journalist who works for the Ekho Moskvy and Mayak radio station.

The Dart Center invites midcareer journalists to apply for the 2012 Ochberg Fellowship Program. For the first time the Fellowship is truly global, welcoming applications from midcareer journalists worldwide.

The Embassy of the United States of America is now accepting applications for the 2012 Alumni Grants Program. Alumni of all U.S. Government-funded exchange and training programs, including FLEX, UGRAD, Muskie, the International Visitor Leadership Program, Community Connections, Open World, USDA Cochran and FEP exchanges, Department of Commerce SABIT exchanges, and those of other implementers are eligible.

A bronze monument to the late Kyrgyz opposition journalist Gennady Pavlyuk, who died two years ago after he was bound and thrown from a building, has been stolen.

The International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan (the IPGA), coordinated by ARTICLE 19, has launched its website www.AzerbaijanFreeXpression.org and Facebook and Twitter profiles ahead of this week’s Eurovision Song Competition, which will commence in Baku, Azerbaijan on 22 May.

It’s never a good time to be a government critic in Tajikistan, but this week has been particularly bad. Two critics have been violently attacked in separate incidents.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged world leaders to «hold Central Asian regimes responsible for denying global access to information by throwing critical reporters behind bars.»

An Azerbaijani freelance reporter for RFE/RL will become one of 70 journalists killed in action last year to be commemorated at a U.S. news and journalism museum.