2005-2014

A district court in russia has ordered a newspaper to refute information, apologise and pay moral damages in defamation case, the Moscow-based Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) has said, quoting delayed reports. On October 10, the Ufa Oktyabrsky District Court issued a ruling in the defamation lawsuit filed by Justice Rosa Gilyazitdinova against newspaper Chas Pik. Na Magistrali...

The state of fixed and mobile telephone networks in Zimbabwe is impeding freedom of expression in the country, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has reported. The sole fixed telephone network, run by the state-owned company TelOne, is in an appalling state of affairs with erratic coverage in urban areas and is virtually non-existent in rural areas. This has inadvertently led to a major...

Two journalists were shot and wounded on Friday in Peshawar. The city is the capital of the North West Frontier Province, which adjoins Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas and has been the scene of a number of attacks on foreigners and government officials in the last few weeks. From his hospital bed in Peshawar, Sami Yousafzai, Newsweek magazine's special correspondent in the region...

China has agreed to relax controls on financial news providers in an out-of-court settlement of a dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada. The deal ends Chinese state news agency Xinhua's role as a regulator and the requirement for foreign suppliers of financial information to act through an agent, and provides protection for confidential business information. Calling it a...

The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) has launched its e-newspaper VietnamPlus ( www.vietnamplus.vn) with an aim to provide better information services for local and foreign readers. VietnamPlus will provide more news to readers than any other daily e-newspaper in Viet Nam. Its coverage will range from politics and socio-economics to culture-sports and science and technology from Viet Nam and around the...

The editor-in-chief of a small and vocal opposition newspaper in the Moscow suburbs, who fought a campaign to protect a forest from destruction by real-estate developers, is in critical condition after being assaulted and beaten outside his home. Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, was found unconscious after being badly beaten on Thursday near his home in the...

There has been a sharp rise in the number of media freedom violations in Zambia recorded during the just ended presidential by-election of October 30. During the pre and immediate post election period, between September and November 2008, there were 16 media freedom violations compared to six between January and August 2008, says the Zambia chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)

The Chinese government is still demonstrating lack of goodwill towards foreign journalists trying to visit Tibet. Its repression of Tibetans who dare to talk about what has happened to them has remained unabated. A Tibetan monk, for example, was arrested three days ago after speaking openly in a video and answering a foreign journalist's questions about the torture he underwent in prison. "The

Journalists from various media outlets in Ecuador have protested the new security measures that have been implemented since October 22 by the National Assembly's Legislative and Auditing Commission, better known as the "Congresillo". According to the new regulations, journalists may only occupy the press room and cannot access the offices of the General Secretariat, the Presidency or any upper...

A freedom of expression advocate has been charged with libel and defamation by the South Sulawesi Regional Police Office in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI) has reported. The chief of the South Sulawesi Regional Police Office, Police Inspector General Sisno Adiwinoto, accused Upi Asmaradana, the coordinator of the Coalition of Journalists against Criminalisation of...