2005-2014

An appeal court in Andijan reduced human rights activist Gulbahor Turaeva’s sentence from six years in prison to a suspended three-year sentence on 12 June after she promised the court to turn over a new leaf and criticised several independent journalists by name. It was the second time in a month that an Uzbek court has suspended an activist’s jail sentence after a public confession. A doctor and...

The International Federation of Journalists today renewed calls for urgent action to protect Palestinian journalists after an armed raid at the weekend on the Gaza offices of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate by militants linked to Hamas. Gunmen entered the offices of the Syndicate, which is affiliated to the IFJ, on Saturday and seized documents and computers according to a statement issued...

Sri Lanka's Military commander for Jaffna region, Major Gen. G.A. Chandrasiri Sunday accused Somini Sengupta, a senior reporter for New York Times for "shameful falsification of facts...depraving the true spirit of professional journalism," for quoting him as saying that "certain members of the Security forces are involved in Human Rights violations in Jaffna." The Major General said in a report...

A São Paulo state court banned the Folha de Vinhedo weekly on 15 June from publishing an interview in which Paulo Cabral, the Vinhedo municipal government’s former legal secretary, accused various local officials and businessmen of corruption. The ban was requested by two businessmen named in the interview, Rogério Sanches Cunha and Osias Daudt, and a local judge, Herivelto Araújo Godoy. Their...

Suresh Chandra Adhikary, the editor of the weekly Chure Sadnesh, and Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, the editor of Kayakairan National Daily, were beaten by police on 16 June when the went to Mahendra Adarsha Hospital in the central district of Chitwan. The police used force to disperse a crowd of local residents who had begun to demolish the hospital’s perimeter wall in order to build a road. When the...

The body of an Iraqi newspaper editor kidnapped last week was found Sunday in Baghdad, police said. Gunmen ambushed Flayeh Wadi Mijthab, editor of the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, last Wednesday in eastern Baghdad as he was heading to work. His 25-year-old son and driver were left behind, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Mijthab's body was discovered Sunday near the Firdaws mosque in the al...

A Channel One television reporter said he was shot in the shoulder by an unidentified gunman outside his apartment building last week in an attack that might be linked to a book he is writing about the 1990s aluminum wars. Andrei Kalitin, 37, said he was shot at around 9 p.m. Wednesday in the courtyard of 4 Vysokaya Ulitsa in southern Moscow, Kommersant reported Friday. The attacker fired a...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Alan Johnston's kidnappers have threatened to "slaughter" him if Hamas tries to rescue him, but Hamas sources say the comments are little more than bluster ahead of an imminent handover of the long-held BBC correspondent. A senior source within the office of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told The Washington Times that in the actual negotiations, the kidnappers have...

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC News is reaching into the world of print journalism to help it cover the 2008 presidential election. The network's new division is teaming up with the National Journal Group for reporters who will provide in-depth coverage of the candidates on the campaign trail, beginning late this summer. The staff will be a mix of new hires and existing employees from NBC...

Efforts to win the release of the kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston were set back last night when the militants holding him threatened to kill him and said he would not be freed until their demands were met. The warning, from a spokesman for a group calling itself the Army of Islam, came on a day when Hamas officials had suggested Johnston's release was only hours away. "Freeing this detainee...