News

ONE of the measures of change in the media scenario in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries is their coverage of two wars in the region in about a decade. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, it was days before some of Saudi newspapers reported the event, which they referred to evasively as "tension" in the region. In contrast, since day one, regional newspapers splashed reports on the US-led...

In pressing his indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the special prosecutor is pitting three prominent journalists against their former source, a strategy that experts in law and journalism say has rarely been used or tested. It is all but unheard of for reporters to turn publicly on their sources or for prosecutors to succeed in conscripting members of a profession that prizes its independence. Yet...

NEW DELHI: The Rajasthan High Court has ordered the release of a Pakistani journalist held for violating the Official Secrets Act (OSA) in 1991. The court asked the government to release Sajid Bashir from the Jaipur Central Jail and repatriate him by November 21. Acting on the petition filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, a prominent civil rights group, the division bench of Justices...

IMPHAL, OCT 28 (PTI): Newspapers were not published in Manipur today following a decision by editors and managements in protest against frequent interferences by militants in the functioning of media organisations. A joint meeting of editors and senior journalists of different papers was held yesterday and the decision was taken not to bring out editions of the dailies indefinitely, sources said...

Google may launch its widely anticipated online payments system Google Wallet before the holidays, an analyst said Friday, giving the search giant yet another way to profit from its widening Web empire. The service is expected to rival eBay’s PayPal, which allows web users to transfer money from, say, consumer to merchant without using a credit card. PayPal users have to credit their accounts...

ISLAMABAD, 28 Oct 2005 (IRIN) - Pakistan was hit by the worst earthquake in its history earlier this month where so far over 54,000 are known to have died in Pakistan and 1,300 in Indian-administered Kashmir. Some aid workers say the donor response to the massive disaster had been muted compared to other big disasters because the crisis has been less effectively covered by the media, in particular...

KATMANDU, Nepal -- A general strike shut down schools, businesses and transportation in the capital Friday in a protest of new laws restricting the media for criticizing Nepal's king. Nepal's seven major political parties called the strike to oppose new regulations that let authorities shut down newspapers and radio stations and jail journalists. The new laws, imposed Oct. 9, make publishing or...

MICROSOFT'S THIRD-QUARTER EARNINGS CAME TO $3.14 billion, or 29 cents per share--up from $2.53 billion, or 23 cents per share, last year, the company reported Thursday. The MSN division posted a 4 percent gain in operating income in the third quarter, to $83 million from $80 million last year. MSN's increase was fueled largely by a $60 million, or 20 percent, increase in online ad revenue. That...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP): Deteriorating security in Iraq has made it much more difficult to provide the news coverage Americans need to understand the war and reconstruction efforts, several journalists said Friday. As the military death toll rises, the media also is under pressure from critics in the United States to cover the "good news" of the U.S.-led reconstruction efforts, the journalists noted...

NEW YORK: Goldman Sachs issued a chilling note today on trends in the newspaper industry raising severe doubts about near-term ad and revenue growth. It said revenue performance for 2005 will be at its worst level since at least 2001-2002. "As investors think about the prospects for the newspaper sector (and the ad-based media sector broadly) in 2006," the note began, "we offer the following...