2005-2014

(RSF/IFEX) - Detained journalist and writer Michel Kilo was taken before a military prosecutor in Damascus on 6 March 2007 and accused of inciting fellow inmates in Adra prison, near Damascus, to sign the "Beirut-Damascus, Damascus-Beirut" joint statement, which he himself signed in May 2006 and for which he is being prosecuted by a criminal court. "The Syrian regime is hounding Kilo while trying...

Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, who fell to death from his apartment building window, had faced threats while reporting on a highly sensitive story that Russia planned to sell sophisticated missiles to Syria and Iran. Had Safronov’s story been right, it would have caused enormous embarrassment to President Vladimir Putin, who had assured Israel and the United States that the arms deal had been

The Taliban has claimed to have “captured” an Italian journalist and his Afghan translator and driver in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a veteran reporter for the daily La Repubblica based in Afghanistan, has been out of contact with his newspaper since Sunday. The Taliban Tuesday said it had seized a man it alleged was a spy posing as a...

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has come in for trenchant criticism from press freedom organisations for endangering the life of an editor by accusing him of harbouring links with the militant Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), train near La Macarena, a town in a rebel-controlled zone in south Colombia. President Alvaro...

NEW YORK - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Monday it fired a former systems technician who allegedly recorded phone conversations between the company's public relations office and a newspaper reporter. Wal-Mart said the technician, who it did not identify, also intercepted text messages using his own personal equipment. The retailer said he was acting alone, but declined to say what his motive may have...

LONDON: In one corner, media titan Rupert Murdoch with his tight grip on pay-TV in Britain. In the other, airline and music entrepreneur Richard Branson, keen to expand his empire by taking some of Murdoch's territory. In the middle are millions of pay-TV viewers who have been deprived of some of the most popular programs on TV. The battle between British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC — 39 percent...

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) says it will pay the costs of a Bhutanese newspaper after the paper appealed for international financial aid to allow it to continue publishing. The Bhutan Reporter has been produced and financed since 2004 by a handful of journalists living in seven refugee camps in Nepal who work for no pay. The journalists said they could no longer afford the 2,000...

New York, March 7, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists today urged Mexican President Felipe Calderón to sign new federal legislation decriminalizing defamation, libel, and slander. Voting 100-0 with one abstention, the Mexican Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that effectively directs all such cases to civil court. The measure, already approved by the lower chamber of Congress, seeks to make...

Over 1,000 news media personnel around the world have been killed trying to report the news in the past decade, with Iraq and Russia topping the list as the deadliest countries for the profession, according to a report released Tuesday. India stands sixth. The uncle (left) and father of Reuters journalist Waleed Khaled cry over his his body at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital after he was shot in the...

NEW YORK: Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who spent more than 80 days in captivity in Iraq last year before being freed following an international call for her release, has retuned to the Middle East, currently reporting out of Cairo for the paper. Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim confirmed that Carroll had been working out of Cairo following her leave of absence last fall to...