News

Anti-riot police assaulted journalists covering two different protests in Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan on Saturday and Tuesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Several journalists told the New York-based CPJ on Tuesday that police prevented them on Saturday from covering clashes between security forces and students who had taken to the streets to protest the Ministry of...

Another Pakistani journalist, Azamat Ali Bangash, a correspondent for Saama TV, has been killed in a suicide bombing, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) reported that Bangash was killed in an April 17 suicide bombing while covering food distribution in a refugee camp near Orakzai, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas near...

The Philippines government has dropped murder charges against Zaldy Ampatuan, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and his uncle, Akmad Ampatuan, former mayor of Mamasapano on the southern island of Mindanao, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The move, announced in Manila on Saturday, overruled the Quezon City Regional Court, which is hearing the...

The Kiev police have stepped up their attempts to harass and intimidate journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska in connection with her coverage of a demonstration outside an animal fur store in February, in which smoke grenades and eggs with paint were thrown at the store, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). When she was interrogated again on April 13 by a police inspector, he was...

Authorities in the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) are holding for treason journalist Ernest Vardanian in the regional capital of Tiraspol since April 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Vardanian is being held in an isolation unit and without officially stated charges, according to news reports. On April 9, at a closed-door hearing at the Tiraspol City...

One Pakistani journalist was killed and others were injured in a suicide bombing at a hospital in Quetta Friday, according to international news reports. Details are still emerging, and some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition, but Pakistani colleagues told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that a senior Samaa TV cameraman, Malik Arif, died in the attack. Five other...

There has been an alarming deterioration in the press freedom situation in Ukraine since the two-round presidential election on January 17 and February 7, which was won by Viktor Yanukovych, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Despite the persistence of self-censorship, Ukraine had risen significantly in the RSF press freedom index in recent years, but the past three months have seen a...

Yemeni authorities have pressed new charges against Muhammad al-Maqaleh, editor of the opposition Yemeni Socialist Party's news website Aleshteraki, in connection with a 2005 article, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Saturday, the Press and Publications Court summoned al-Maqaleh to appear before it on April 18 on charges of “insulting the president,” according to local...

A Spanish court April 12 acquitted five journalists who ran the Basque-language daily Euskaldunon Egunkaria of all charges of links to the Basque armed separatist group ETA, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The charges were brought against the journalists in 2003 and, as a result, the newspaper had been closed since February 20, 2003 on the orders of a National Court judge, Juan de...

The Moscow police on Wednesday made an abortive attempt to search the premises of the Moscow-based independent weekly The New Times/ Novoye Vremya in execution of a court order that is the subject of an appeal by the weekly, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Moscow’s Tverskoi district court issued the search order on April 5 in response to a libel action by the elite Omon police and...