2005-2014

MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti) - Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday he had bought a 49% stake in an independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, but pledged to put no pressure on editorial policy. The architect of perestroika and the Soviet Union's sole president announced the acquisition of the bi-weekly edition at a news conference on the sidelines of a World Newspaper Congress in Moscow. "We are against...

Moscow, June 7, Interfax - The authors of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and triggered Muslims' angry protests worldwide are still getting death threats, Jyllands-Posten Editor-in-Chief Jorn Mikkelsen said at the 13th World Editors Forum organized by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) in Moscow on Tuesday. "Twelve of our...

7 June 2006 – With yet one more Iraqi journalist murdered, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today yet again stressed the vital role of a free press plays in establishing democracy, voicing the hoped that “the authorities will be able to stop this wave of assassinations which is as tragic as it is senseless.” Ali Jaafar 24, a well-known...

New York, June 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arson attack on an investigative reporter and his family in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Attackers set fire June 3 to the apartment of Sergei Yanovsky, correspondent of the Kyiv-based newspaper Kievskiye Vedomosti. The newspaper reported that unidentified assailants poured gasoline through the kitchen window of...

A prominent Turkish journalist went on trial on Wednesday charged with undermining the authority of the armed forces by writing in support of a young man who refused to do military service. Perihan Magden is one of several journalists and writers who face the courts this week as nationalist prosecutors inside the criminal justice system try to silence opinion and comment that, they argue, threaten...

(HRW/IFEX) - (New York, June 7, 2006) - Authorities in Bangladesh must promptly and impartially investigate and prosecute violent attacks against journalists last week by supporters of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Human Rights Watch said today. Nine days after the attacks, the police have made no arrests and a local newspaper remains closed. The attacks and slow government...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - Burma's military government has ordered domestic journals and magazines to stop publishing the columns of veteran journalist Ludu Sein Win after an opinion piece critical of the junta appeared in the "International Herald Tribune" (IHT) on May 23, 2006. "Our journal can't use any of Saya Ludu Sein Win's articles because the censorship board ordered us not to publish," the New Delhi...

Press freedom worldwide is deteriorating, with 38 journalists murdered in the past six months and increasing pressure on freedom of expression in many countries, according to the annual half-year review of press freedom by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The report, presented Saturday to the Board of the Paris-based WAN on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum...

Google has admitted for the first time that it compromised its principles when it entered the Chinese market and agreed to toe Beijing’s strict line on censorship. Speaking in Washington, Sergey Brin, Google’s billionaire co-founder, said the company, which operates under the motto "do no evil", had adopted "a set of rules that we weren’t comfortable with". In a hint that Google could adjust its...

NEW DELHI: A woman freelance journalist, who was convicted for allegedly leaking classified national secrets to ISI and other foreign agents, was ordered to be released by the Delhi High Court on the ground that the trial court has no jurisdiction to try the offence. Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed while setting aside the seven year conviction imposed by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, ordered that...