The Honduran press is all abuzz about the military coup that took place yesterday in advance of a referendum aimed at strengthening the role of the President and allowing him to stand for a second term. Manuel Zelaya was put on a plane to Costa Rica by the military and he was replaced by Roberto Micheletti who we see here on the front page of La Prensa. The paper appears to be supportive of this action. It relays the official line – a move to defend the Constitution, the rule of law and the continuity of the Republic. The National Congress “accepted the resignation of President Manuel Zelaya,” it says. I’m not so sure Mr. Zelaya would see it as a “resignation” seeing as 200 soldiers arrived in a truck and surrounded his residence before later putting him on a flight out of the country.

Hugo Chavez’s defence of Zelaya has created alarm in Honduras due to interference in intenal affairs, says La Prensa. Zelaya is an ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and other Bolivarian nations that support an autonomous Latin America free of American influence. Their organisation, ALBA is preparing its response. That’s the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America.

Cuba is also a member of ALBA and a Cuban newspaper La Demajagua quotes Chavez who said he rejected the coup from his very core… “from his bone barrow” even! The Venezuelan President says the CIA was involved in the coup so as to prevent Zelaya from consulting the people in a referendum and so as to maintain American influence in the country. However, Barack Obama has condemned the military coup.

The New York-based tabloid Newsday has consulted investors who lost out to Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme. They were asked what kind of sentence should Madoff get. Phyllis Feiner responded, “I would like him to be put in a room with all of his victims. I don’t think he would come out.”

Rolling Stone Magazine is inquiring into the circumstances of Michael Jackson’s death. Dr. Conrad Murray who was there when Jackson died was taking a lot of heat but he has insisted he didn’t give the singer any injection; he was already unconscious and not breathing upon his arrival. Murray however had been his doctor for three years so questions are outstanding about the prescription drugs that Jackson was taking. Indeed his children’s nanny gave an interview yesterday to the Sunday Times in the UK revealing that the singer was taking up to eight different drugs a day. Indeed, she had personally had to pump his stomach on a regular basis…There was one period it was so bad that I wouldn’t let the children see him, she said.

This hasn’t stopped fans remembering him and celebrating as we see in the Guardian. Although the celebrations have in some places been more about the music than the man at least they are the reports coming from Glastonbury, a big music festival that took place in the UK this past weekend. On one stage a DJ shouted, “We lost a legend this week.” Queue a muted response from the crowd. Then the DJ played a Michael Jackson medley. Suddenly the cheers rose.

But Glastonbury, the paper admits, remains in a world of its own. While there was shock at the news of Jackson’s death, there were also jokes – for instance ‘Jackson 4’ t-shirts were on sale. Not in good taste, it has to be said!

The BBC’s Persian service has been labelled “a propagator of an all-out war” against the Islamic Republic by Iran’s official news agency, we read in the New York Times. The Persian TV service is broadcast by satellite and has some 6 million viewers in Iran. The state television service in Teheran has interviewed protestors who say they were influenced by the BBC Persian channel to take to the streets. One woman said she even went out to buy a hand grenade! The channel’s website had 3 million hits the day after the elections and officials fear that along with Twitter and online news sources, the BBC Persian service is a major threat to internal security. Teheran has made several attempts to scramble or jam the signal.