News

The trial of Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein, who faces 40 lashes after being arrested a month ago for wearing trousers, has been postponed, again, until September 7, according to International Press Institute (IPI) fellow Vuslat Dogan Sabancı, who was in Khartoum for the hearing. The delay in Hussein’s trial is apparently designed to give the judges time to decide whether Hussein’s job as a UN...

Moroccan authorities banned two magazines from newsstands over the weekend after they published a poll about the 10-year reign of King Mohammed VI. Official MAP news agency said independent weeklies, Tel Quel, a French-language publication, and Nichane, an Arabic-language magazine, were seized for failing to respect the 1958 press code. Communications Minister Khalid Naciri told the Associated...

A member of extremist Sunni group Jaish Mohammed group has confessed to the 2006 rape and murder of prominent Iraqi TV reporter Atwar Bahjat. The confession was made in a videotape broadcast at a press conference Tuesday. Suspect Yasser al-Takhi described how he and three others abducted and killed Bahjat and her two-man crew, Adnan Abdullah and Khaled Mohsen, in the central Iraqi town of Samarra...

Zimbabwean authorities have issued an operating licence to a local newspaper group forced to close down by the state five years ago, a move which suggests the new unity government intends to open up the media. A special committee set up by the Information Ministry nearly two years ago said the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) was free to resume operations, according to zimguardian.com. ANZ...

The Venezuelan government has withdrawn the licences of 34 radio and TV stations, 13 of which already stopped broadcasting earlier. When the authorities announced the withdrawal of 34 broadcast media licences on August 2, they warned that 200 other radio and TV stations could suffer the same fate. Diosdado Cabello, the minister who supervises the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel)...

Eight newspaper publishers were interrogated by the Niamey police on August 1 at the behest of the President’s son for publishing a document accusing him and another person of taking kickbacks, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. After being questioned, two of the publishers were taken into custody in connection with another case and were due to appear before prosecutors on August 5....

A group of more than 30 armed pro-government activists riding motorcycles stormed the premises of private broadcaster Globovisión on Monday and set off tear gas, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local reports. A Caracas police agent suffered minor injuries during the 1 p.m. attack, Globovisión reported. No station employee was reported injured, and no extensive...

Two Nigerien editors whose weekly newspapers reported on corruption charges involving the national human rights commission have been in police custody since Saturday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists and news reports. Abdoulaye Tiémogo of the Le Canard Dechainé and Ali Soumana of Le Courrier were being held at the main police station in the capital...

North Korea on Tuesday released two jailed American journalists after a visit from former US President Bill Clinton in the highest-level US contact with North Korea since Clinton was president nearly a decade ago, Reuters has reported. North Korea's KCNA news agency said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had issued a special pardon to the two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling of US media outlet...

Five journalists have been released in Iran, including one on Monday who had been held for a year. The other four were picked up in the crackdown following the June 12 elections, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Authorities released freelance journalist Massoud Kurdpour on Monday after he completed a one-year jail term in Mahabad Central Prison in northwestern Iran...