The international media were in hot pursuit of French President Francois Hollande on Saturday as he paid a visit to his rural stronghold of Correze, in the midst of a sex scandal. More than 90 journalists were accredited to cover Hollande's visit to the south-central region that he led from 2008 until his election as president in 2012.

In response to two-month-long public demonstrations, President Viktor Yanukovych took his chance to establish a police state in Ukraine. The president's Party of Regions together with allies from the Communist Party of Ukraine voted last week for a number of controversial laws and amendments that were immediately labeled by media as "dictatorship laws." The legislation, which is said to infringe on basic human rights and freedoms sent thousands of Ukrainians to the streets on Jan. 19 for a new mass protest.

After a four-day break, the jury returned to court 12 of London's Old Bailey to hear more evidence on charge seven of the indictment which relates to an alleged 2011 conspiracy to conceal evidence from the police by Rebekah Brooks, her husband Charlie Brooks and former News International security chief Mark Hanna.

A man who created a Facebook page poking fun at a revered Greek Orthodox monk has been sentenced to 10 months in prison in Greeceafter being found guilty of blasphemy. Thousands of Greeks took to social networking sites to protest against the arrest in 2012 of Filippos Loizos, 28, who used a play on words to portray Father Paisios as a traditional pasta-based dish.

The Wall Street Journal will not have to abide by UK court reporting restrictions in its international coverage of the phone-hacking trial after winning a legal battle. The title, whose parent company Dow Jones was bought by News Corporation in 2007, requested access to Crown Prosecution service documents relating to the case at the beginning of the trial but refused to sign an agreement that it would abide by court reporting restrictions in its overseas editions.

Sunday Times columnist Jeremy Clarkson has apologised "profusely" after he was photographed asleep aboard an aircraft beside an offensive hand-drawn message The Top Gear host was sleeping on board the aircraft with his co-host James May in the background. A third individual held up a white card sign with an arrow pointed towards Clarkson with the message "gay c***" scrawled across it. More than 2.8 million people follow Clarkson on Twitter and the message was soon retweeted.

Guardian News and Media (GNM) has initiated the Guardian Film Awards which aims to celebrate movies through untraditional categories, including one that allows its readers to vote for their favourite marketing campaign. The awards will include traditional categories to allow readers to vote for their favourite movies of the year, including best film and best director, but will also allow them to highlight their favourite film festival and movie scene, while actors will be not divided by gender.

GuardianWitness, the Guardian's award-winning platform for user-generated content (UGC), is due to host its first awards almost a year after it launched in April 2013. The ceremony, to be held in March, will award those users who have made "outstanding contributions" to the platform either through assignments set by the Guardian team, in relation to breaking news events or original ideas for stories.

A stalker who posted the name of his 15-year-old victim on a newspaper's Facebook page escaped a conviction for breaching an anonymity order intended to protect her from publicity because the law only covers reports of court cases in newspapers and radio and television broadcasts.

A group of privacy activists in England have won permission to sue Google in that country over its tricking of Apple's Safari browser into accepting its tracking cookies, even when the browser settings forbade this. The judge argued that it should be heard in an English court, because it dealt with a "developing area" of English law, and because it was unreasonable to expect a small group of individuals to spend a fortune suing Google in the U.S. when the alleged damage was done in England.