News

Elena Kostyuchenko, a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and Yury Timofeyev, a reporter for Prague-based Radio Liberty, were arrested while covering the violent dispersal of environmentalists who had camped out at Khimki forest, north of Moscow, in an attempt to prevent part of it being torn down, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Kostyuchenko and Timofeyev were taken to a...

The US State Department has reversed its decision to deny a visa to a leading Colombian journalist whose reporting has been highly critical of the country's US-allied president. Morris, his wife and their two children can now travel to Harvard for a yearlong Nieman Foundation fellowship for mid-career journalists. "Happy, happy! This was terrible," a relieved Hollman Morris, an independent TV...

The International Press Institute is concerned by reports that the media is facing harassment in India’s conflict-ridden northern and north-eastern states. In Manipur, where Indian security forces are locked in conflict with several armed separatist groups, local media have declared an indefinite cessation of publication on Friday in response to threats against S Singlianmang Guite, a local...

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has welcomed a landmark decision by the Constitutional Court of Serbia rejecting repressive amendments to the Public Information Act of Serbia. The Journalists' Association of Serbia (JAS), an EFJ affiliate, has won its appeal against the Act after its adoption by the Serbian Parliament in August 2009. In the ruling of July 22, the court found in favour...

There has been a series of threats and attacks on Gabriel Bustamante, a Paraguayan journalist based in the small southern town of Ayolas on the Argentine border, who works for radio FM Ayolas and who is a correspondent for the newspapers La Nación and Crónica, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Last week, Bustamante was the target of repeated murder attempts by Francisco and Valentín...

Monday's bombing of Al Arabiya's Baghdad office brought the death toll of the channel's employees to 15 since the start of the war in Iraq in 2003. Four people were killed and 15 were injured on Monday when a suicide bomber detonated a 120kg bomb in a van outside Al Arabiya's Baghdad office at 9.25am Baghdad time. According to the Iraq-based Journalism Freedom Observatory, a total of 249 media...

The Newspaper Publishers Association in the UK has criticised the BBC Trust for allowing the BBC to bring out mobile apps. The BBC Trust decided against a "public value test" before allowing the BBC to begin the process of bringing out apps, and starting with the already popular BBC News app for iPhone. However, the Newspaper Publishers Association, according to Brand Republic, expressed its...

The CBI has finally filed an appeal before the Madras High Court Bench against a lower court verdict acquitting 17 persons, including a DSP, in the 2007 Dinakaran newspaper office attack case, the Press Trust of India (PTI) has reported. Stating that the Centre had taken time in granting permission to go in for the appeal, the CBI also filed a petition requesting that the delay be condoned. If the...

A jailed Iranian journalist has warned that if his complaint against Iran's supreme leader, president, and chief prosecutor is not pursued he will appeal to international bodies, RFE/RL's Radio Farda has reported. Isa Saharkhiz said in an open letter on July 25 that if the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, did not take action on his grievance in the coming month he would take his...

Iranian reporter Hamid Massouminejad is no longer under house arrest in Milan. Mohammadali Hosseini, Iran's ambassador to Italy, told the Iranian Students News Agenc (ISNA) that the Milan prosecutor signed the order of release which was also approved by the court interrogator on Monday. Hosseini announced that this did not mean that the file has been closed by described it as a "positive step"...