2005-2014

Reporters Without Borders today strongly condemned an attempt to kill journalist Lirio Abbate with a car bomb and voiced its firm support for his work, which includes reporting on organised crime for the Ansa news agency and the national daily La Stampa. Two people were disturbed early on 2 September while attaching a bomb underneath his car in Palermo, the Sicilian capital. The city’s mayor...

Violence in Somalia has been escalating, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says and this has put enormous pressure on journalists reporting on the conflict for both Somali news organisations and international media. “Journalists themselves have become targets,” said IFJ General Secretary Aidan White in a letter to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations. “This year...

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about a broadside on the media which the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, delivered during a speech to the Assembly of Experts on 5 September. “What is left of press freedom now in Iran?” the organisation asked. “Ayatollah Khamenei’s comments have reinforced the climate of censorship that oppresses all journalists who...

New York, September 7, 2007—An Argentine Supreme Court ruling condemning the province of Neuquén for the withdrawal of state advertising from a critical daily will help protect the media from government manipulation, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On Wednesday, Argentina’s highest tribunal ruled the government cannot suppress or substantially reduce official advertising to the...

Reporters Without Borders is relieved to learn that imprisoned journalists Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolvahed Hiva Botimar have ended the hunger strike they began on 14 July. When he received a visit from relatives on 4 September, Botimar announced that he and Hassanpour had resumed eating after more than 50 days of consuming nothing but sweetened water. “We now call on the judicial authorities to...

Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by a wave of threats and attacks on journalists by supporters of the two candidates in Sierra Leone’s presidential election run-off tomorrow. Many cases of violence involving members of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the opposition All People’s Congress (APC) have been reported in the past two months. “The run-up to the second round of the...

The decapitated body of a Sudanese newspaper editor accused of insulting Islam was recovered Wednesday, a day after he was kidnapped by masked gunmen. MOURNERS ALL: Sudanese mourners carry the body of the chief editor of a Sudanese independent daily, Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, who provoked a furore by publishing an article denounced as blasphemous and was found dead a day after being abducted

Leading international news agencies Thursday launched a boycott of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, plunging the event into controversy on the eve of its opening game. Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters, the Associated Press (AP), Getty Pictures and German agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) said no text, photo or video news on the World Cup would be sent for 24 hours in protest at restrictions imposed...

A Comombian radio station director was found stabbed to death at his home Wednesday in Cartago, a city in the western Valle del Cauca province. Javier Dario Arroyave was killed in the town of Cartago, the base of Colombia's most powerful cocaine cartel, but authorities said there was no immediate evidence of a connection between the attack and his work. Arroyave, news director for the Cartago

New York, September 6, 2007—Azerbaijani authorities must stop the persecution of Eynulla Fatullayev, an imprisoned editor who has been hit with a series of politically inspired criminal charges since he began investigating alleged government wrongdoing, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On Tuesday, the National Security Ministry (MNB) charged Fatullayev with tax evasion, which...