News

Restrictions on movement of media persons in the wake of curfew in Srinagar and certain other parts of the valley were on Sunday lifted by the Jammu and Kashmir government which issued fresh curfew passes to them. Media persons can perform their official duties, an official spokesman said. He said there was no gag order on the media but "we were only enforcing the curfew strictly". Newspapers...

The Pentagon on Thursday reversed its ban on a Miami Herald reporter from covering military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said the reporter can return to the naval base there to cover a hearing next week, the newspaper has reported. In an email sent Thursday, Bryan G Whitman, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said that Carol Rosenberg "will be...

CNN has fired a senior editor for Mideast news after she published a Twitter message that said she respected the late Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, branded a terrorist by the US, American and UK media said Thursday. Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah, one of Shiite Islam’s highest religious authorities and an early mentor of Hizbullah, died in Beirut Sunday. The Guardian reported: [ Link] The...

Spain's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the reopening of a probe into the death of a Spanish journalist who was hit by US tank fire in Iraq in 2003, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. A spokeswoman said the Supreme Court had accepted an appeal by the family of cameraman Jose Couso and ordered the lower National Court to reopen the investigation into his death. Couso was one of two...

As militant outfits operating in Manipur carry on targeting the media persons and pressurise them to become their mouthpiece, the journalist fraternity here are agitated. Newspaper offices in Imphal recently witnessed a deserted look following a threat by Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) - Military Council, which has split into two factions, Asia News International (ANI) has reported. While one...

The body of Hemchandra Pandey, a freelance journalist killed along with Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad in an alleged gunfight with police, was late Tuesday brought to New Delhi, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) has reported. His body was brought to the capital by his wife Babita, his brother and a few human rights activists from Andhra Pradesh. Babita, who says that her husband was...

A journalist whose wife and two daughters fainted after teargas seeped into their house has been prevented from meeting them for two days after curfew passes were declared invalid, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) has reported. The details: [ Link] Izhar Wani of the French news agency AFP has been desperate to get home to meet his wife and daughters Saira, 10, and Saba, 6. All three were alone...

Even as the authorities claimed to have issued a few curfew passes to media persons in Kashmir, police on Friday severely beat up senior journalist Riyaz Masroor, working with the Urdu service of BBC, outside his Alocha Bagh residence in Srinagar. “I received a phone call from the Information Department this morning asking me to come and collect the fresh curfew passes. As soon as I reached near...

The US government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Hollman Morris, who produces an independent TV news programme called "Contravia," has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing...

Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old US army intelligence analyst, was charged on Tuesday with leaking a video of a US army helicopter attack in Baghdad in July 2007 in which two employees of the Reuters news agency were killed. Currently held in a US military detention centre in Kuwait, he is accused of divulging confidential information, a US army release said. Posted on the Wikileaks website on April...