2005-2014

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir saw its first women's magazine hit the news stands this week, but while issues such as dating and working mothers are on the contents page, politics and Islam are not. ‘She’ reflects changes in the conservative Muslim state, where women are increasingly faced with the kind of choices that more liberal societies have been dealing with for far longer, the magazine said in...

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir saw its first women’s magazine hit the news stands this week, but while issues such as dating and working mothers are on the contents page, politics and Islam are not. "She’ reflects changes in the conservative Muslim state, where women are increasingly faced with the kind of choices that more liberal societies have been dealing with for far longer, the magazine said in...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced concern about Munir Mengal, the head of Baloch Voice, a Baluchi-language TV station based in the United Arab Emirates, who has been missing since he arrived in the southern city of Karachi on a flight from Bahrain on 7 April 2006. His family thinks Pakistani military intelligence officers arrested him at the airport. The press freedom organisation...

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 7April 2006, Ghana's deputy minister of Trade and Industry, Kofi Osei Ameyaw, filed a suit against "The Insight", a tri-weekly independent newspaper, and two other bi-weekly independent newspapers, "Ghana Palaver" and "Ghanaian Democrat", in an Accra High Court, for allegedly defaming him. The deputy minister is seeking damages of 2 billion Cedis (approx. US$225,000) and a court...

Islamabad - The family of a tribal journalist in Pakistan who disappeared in December said they fear he is in the custody of US forces. A brother of Hayatullah Khan has been meeting with military officials posted in the North Waziristan tribal region and the highest political officials in the North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) who told him they could not help him find his brother because Khan...

BEIJING, April 13 -- Tsinghua University and the Social Science Documentation Publishing House jointly published the "2006 Media Blue Book" in Beijing on April 12th, boldly indicating that taking the year 2005 as a turning point, China's traditional newspaper industry has stopped its constantly rising pace. As its advertising turnover began to drop dramatically by an average margin of over 15%...

These are dizzying times in Latin America by any standard. Across the continent, voters have elected left-leaning governments that are trimming back free-market policies, bolstering regional economic alliances and reawakening a concern for social justice. Leaders like Néstor Kirchner (Argentina), Tabaré Vázquez (Uruguay) and Hugo Chávez (Venezuela) represent a significant political shift in the...

Despite widespread acknowledgement that Ukraine’s media have become much freer since President Viktor Yushchenko came to power over a year ago, the United States plans to continue spending millions of dollars financing the development of independent journalism in the country. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told a conference in Kyiv April 10 that the U.S. will allocate $2.3 million to...

The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) has endorsed a statement condemning the rising incidence of media repression in five African countries earlier this week. The fourth African Media Leadership Conference held in Nairobi, Kenya from April 4-7, was attended by leading media executives and editors from 12 African countries. They took the time to discuss the media situation in East...

With the smoke over the Danish Muhammad cartoons barely having cleared, a new development in the Scandinavian country has the potential to further fray Muslim-Christian relations in Denmark. The co-host of a popular new public television show created to debate religious and cultural differences has divided Danes with her decision to wear a headscarf on air. Some groups are even protesting to get...