News

Reporters Without Borders today called on the Chinese authorities to stop blocking accessing to the website of the independent online encyclopedia Wikipedia, whose popularity has been growing steadily in China. The site has been unavailable in several provinces including Shanghai since 18 October. This latest online censorship paradoxically comes at a moment when China is openly raising the issue...

The country which shows the maximum respect for press freedom is now under threat from Islamic fundamentalists. Death threats have been made against two cartoonists ? whose names are being withheld for security reasons ? after 12 cartoons of Mohammed appeared in the conservative daily Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen. NOT FUNNY: The newspaper has hired security staff to protect the journalists after...

COPENHAGEN -- The ambassadors of Muslim countries to Denmark have protested against 12 newspaper caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed in a letter to Denmark's prime minister, his office said on Thursday. An Islamic group also threatened to carry out attacks in the Scandinavian country over the affair, media reported. Images of the prophet are considered blasphemous under Islam. The 12...

A Danish daily's decision to print twelve cartoons featuring Muslim prophet Mohammed could prove costly for Denmark. Experts fear the caricatures could increase the risk of Denmark becoming the target of a terror attack. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten features in recent propaganda images circulating on the internet. The images show bombs exploding over pictures of the newspaper, and blood flowing...

Shares of Google (GOOG) jumped 12% to an all-time high of $339.90 Friday after the Internet giant blew away Wall Street's third-quarter estimates with a sevenfold surge in profits and a doubling of sales. Analysts tripped over each other in the rush to issue the rosiest research report. Lehman Brothers, First Albany and RBC Capital Markets each lifted their 12-month price targets to $450, despite...

In a show of dissent against Rupert Murdoch, shareholders of News Corp. withheld as much as 15 percent of their vote to re-elect four directors at the media conglomerate's annual meeting Friday to protest the company's failure to consult them on a takeover defense measure. Even though the directors were still re-elected by a large majority, the fact that some shareholders withheld their support...

Press freedom is being eroded in parts of the Western world, failing to advance in Iraq, but making progress in states emerging from repression, the watchdog Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. North Korea once again comes bottom of the RSF fourth annual World Press Freedom Index. It is closely followed in the 167-country list by Eritrea (166th) and Turkmenistan (165th), which are other...

Prague, 20 October 2005 (RFE/RL) -- One of the stories published in "Women's Rights" questioned the harsh punishment under Shari'a law for women found guilty of adultery, such as stoning. Another article argued that giving up Islam is not a crime. The magazine's editor, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, was arrested on 1 October following a complaint made to the Supreme Court by a religious adviser to Afghan...

More than half of the top five Sunday morning talk shows in the United States (US) do not include a single female guest, while male experts featured in the US news media outnumber women nine to one, a new study has revealed. The study, conducted over an eight-month period by the White House Project looked at the Sunday political talk shows on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and FOX. Women comprise more than...

The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) has announced three winners for this year's Courage in Journalism Awards to honour journalists from Bangladesh, Germany and Iran who have faced death threats, braved war zones and reported on events and people with integrity and insight. Since 2000, nine journalists have been killed in Bangladesh and reporters are routinely harassed and beaten up...