2005-2014

THE last man to speak to Paul Klebnikov, the American magazine editor, as he lay dying of gunshot wounds on a Moscow pavement has challenged claims to be made by prosecutors this week that the killing was carried out by Chechen hitmen. Alexander Gordeyev, deputy editor of the Russian language edition of Newsweek, said Klebnikov had told him the shots were fired by a man of Russian appearance – not...

Knight Ridder will begin meeting with potential buyers next week in the next step of offering itself for sale under pressure from unhappy shareholders. The presentations for potential buyers will take two or three days each and the entire process could last two to three weeks, according to people familiar with the situation. A Knight Ridder spokesman declined to comment Friday. The San Jose-based...

Tension prevailed for some time in front of a police station in the temple town of Tirupati following detention of a local journalist here for a few hours today. The journalist, Gandhi, printer and publisher of Telugu weekly 'Tirupati Vani,' was picked up from his residence in the early hours today and detained at the East Police Station for a few hours after a complaint lodged by a neurologist...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN on Thursday that the National Security Agency did not target CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour or any other CNN journalist for surveillance. NBC raised the question in an interview with The New York Times reporter James Risen, asking him whether he knew anything about possible surveillance of Amanpour by the...

IN A MOVE THAT APPEARS to be aimed directly at Microsoft, Google co-founder Larry Page is expected to announce the release of Google Pack, a bundle of software that includes the Firefox open-source Web browser. The software pack, first reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, is also expected to include open-source instant messaging product Trillian, Norton AntiVirus, and RealPlayer, as well...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Forget loners in pyjamas and slippers pouring out their hearts in anonymous solitude. China's bloggers are going offline - and they're having a blast. Among the best known is "Dai San Ge Biao", literally meaning 'wears three watches' but also a play on former leader Jiang Zemin's Three Represents, or "San Ge Dai Biao", political theory. A bespectacled journalist by day whose...

In early 2004, Pat Robertson divined the outcome of the presidential election, then ten months away. "I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," he said on a broadcast of "The 700 Club." "I really believe I’m hearing from the Lord it’s going to be like a blowout election in 2004." God – or at least the fervent, all-justifying, "Christian soldier" belief in God, and of course God’s opposite...

A good way of getting a laugh in a room filled with business people is to utter the words: "Trust me, I'm a journalist." The ribaldry was good natured when I witnessed it a couple of weeks ago but it underscored a feeling that journalists languish somewhere in the realms of property salesmen when it comes to public esteem. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, there is cause for a better assessment and it...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Viacom has done it. Carl Icahn wants Time Warner to do it. And some think it could make sense for Disney, Sony and General Electric to do it too. Welcome to Splitsville. Now that Viacom has splintered off into two companies, other big media companies could find themselves facing increased pressure to break up or, at the very least, sell off assets. All the major media...

The safety of the Deputy Editor of Awareness Times Newspaper, Theophilus S. Gbenda, currently hangs in the balance following death threats issued against him by acting Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Khrushchev Kargbo of the Sierra Leone Police (SLP). t all happened on Friday December 30, 2005 when Theophilus and myself were strolling along Siaka Stevens Street. Approaching the Law Court...