The Breakfast Meeting: Guilty Verdicts in Pussy Riot Case, and China\'s Media Strategy

By NOAM COHEN

10:59 a.m. | Updated Three members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were found guilty on Friday over a stunt they staged in February against Vladimir V. Putin in the main Moscow Russian Orthodox cathedral, David Herszenhorn reports. The scene in hot, overcrowded courtroom with the three women behind bulletproof glass was being streamed live by Russia Today, fueling worldwide interest in the prosecution of the band members, who have received support from musicians around the world including Paul McCartney and Madonna. The judge sentenced each to a two-year prison sentence. The YouTube video of the incident is at nearly 450,000 views.

China's inroads into Africa started with assistance in large construction projects, but lately have been enhanced by a pervasive media strategy, Andrew Jacobs reports. In Kenya, for example, there are two China-based TV networks and a radio statio n, while articles and photographs from its news agency Xinhua appear in popular English-language newspapers. In many ways, China is following a Western template, hoping to bolster its image and influence around the world, particularly in regions rich in the natural resources.

After long objecting to the terms of carrying the NFL Network, the New York-based Cablevision relented and on Friday the network began offering it to subscribers, Richard Sandomir writes. The deal leaves Time Warner Cable, with 12.3 million subscribers, as the last major cable operator not to carry the NFL Network. Executives at Time Warner Cable have viewed the channel as too costly for what they consider little more than a package of football games.

• In the latest dispute over carriage fees, Cablevision stopped carrying stations owned by the Tribune Company on Friday, including WPIX in New York, Reuters reported.

The impasse between Ecuador and Britain over the fate of Juli an Assange means that a man who for many years slept on friends' and supporters' couches now has a fixed address in the heart of London's exclusive Knightsbridge district, John F. Burns writes. But the question of when he will next be able to leave that address, home to the Ecuadoran Embassy, is anyone's guess. His sleeps on an air mattress on an office floor, and, friends say, Mr. Assange has a computer with a broadband connection and, Mr. Burns writes, “regular deliveries of takeout food, carefully inspected by the police.”

The top editors of the student newspaper at the University of Georgia, and much of the staff, resigned on Thursday over what they said was increasing interference by nonstudent managers, Richard Pérez-Peña reported. The newspaper, The Red and Black, is owned by a nonprofit publishing company independent of the school, and has long had an editorial adviser, who, according to the student editor in chief, would be given veto power. For now, the y have moved to a new site: Red and Dead.