Journalist fined for satire on Putin

A journalist who wrote a satitical article on a website about Russia's president has been fined 20,000 rubles (about £400). A court decided that Vladimir Rakhmankov, the editor of the online newspaper Cursiv, was guilty of "insulting the president" in an article about the government's attempts to increase the birthrate which was headlined, "Putin as Russia's phallic symbol." Rakhmankov's website was closed down by the authorities days after he was charged in May this year. (Via Reporters without Borders)