News

A Vietnamese court has sent a former magazine deputy editor to prison for posing as a government official and cheating some businesspeople of nearly US$426,000. The Hanoi People’s Court Wednesday sentenced Nguyen Trong Giac, formerly of Thi Truong Gia Ca (market & price) magazine, to 11 years and his accomplices, Dao Huu Nghi and Nguyen Duc Loi, to 14 and 12 years. Giac, 55 pretended to be deputy...

A group of about 30 supporters of a Nationalist Congress Party's (NCP) corporator ransacked the office of an eveninger here this evening. The assailants entered the office of 'Saanjvarta', situated in Nirala Bazar locality at around 2000 hrs, and ransacked the office by partially damaging the office furniture, fans, tables and window panes, the sources at the newspaper's office told UNI. Angered...

MOSCOW, January 18 (RIA Novosti) - The prosecution in the trial of two ethnic Chechens and a Moscow notary accused of killing Forbes Russia Editor Paul Klebnikov will start to present evidence Wednesday when the trial resumes behind closed doors at the Moscow City Court after a six-day adjournment. Prosecutors claim Chechens Kazbek Dukuzov, Musa Vakhayev and notary Fail Sadretdinov gunned down...

18 January 2006 -- The trial of three ethnic Chechens accused of involvement in the killing of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov has been delayed. Lawyer Ruslan Zakalyuzny said the trial was put off until an unspecified date because the presiding judge is ill. However, court spokeswoman Anna Usacheva said the trial was delayed because one of the defense lawyers was systematically violating court...

SALEM: Journalists were reportedly manhandled by some tribals from Vellakadai in Yercaud, when the former reached the place for coverage of the controversial ‘naked dance ritual’ performed by tribal women. The journalists could make their escape only after police intervention. While a TV anchorman and a few reporters managed to give the slip to tribals, the reporter of a Tamil Daily and its...

Until September 2004, it was illegal for the voice of a woman singing to be broadcast on the radio in Afghanistan. I wanted to see what was going on in Afghanistan since the invasion and spent six weeks writing about the US Army in Kandahar. Later, I visited Herat in the West of Afghanistan. Herat is probably the most stable and fertile part of Afghanistan. During my trip there I was able to visit...

Police and military harassment, intimidation and physical attacks directed against Sri Lankan media personnel, mainly targeting Tamil journalists, have been mounting since Mahinda Rajapakse assumed the presidency last November. These incidents have emerged amid a sharp rise in violence involving the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the growing danger of a return to open...

Jan. 18th - 2006 - Nijmegen/The Netherlands - Louis Sévèke was 41 years old, when the journalist/researcher was liquidated with two shots by a professional assassin last November 15th in Nijmegen in the eastern part of Holland, close to the German border. And when replying: do everybody a favor and don't give us that same old stupid BS again about a 'conspiracy theory': There mostly are no real...

Media personnel blamed that the proposed the Broadcasting Authority Act is the conspicuous evident of the panic stricken mentality on the part of government." They accused the government of attempting to curtail press freedom through the introduction of the act, while the controversial Media Ordinance promulgated some months back is still under consideration of the Supreme Court. Speaking at the...

Leading human rights organizations on Tuesday condemned the trial of a journalist and Chechen rights activist as a government campaign to deprive citizens of one of the last remaining alternative sources of information on the brutal war in Chechnya. Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, the head of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society in Nizhny Novgorod, is being tried on charges of inciting ethnic hatred in...