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A policeman has confessed to beating a Kyrgyz journalist in the southern Osh region who later died from his injuries, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service has reported quoting the country's Deputy Interior Minister Sabyrbek Kurmanaliev. Almaz Tashiyev, 32, was buried on July 13 in the Nookat district. He died the previous day from massive internal injuries suffered during a beating in Nookat on July 4. Details...

Dozens of regional daily newspapers in Venezuela are at risk of having to halt their presses due to government delays in providing foreign currency needed to import paper, a Canadian Press report has said. The National Union of Press Workers said in a statement Wednesday that more than 50 dailies across the country "are on the brink of ceasing operations due to the lack of paper." Some details: [...

Sudanese reporter Lubna Ahmed Al-Hussein is on trial for "dressing in a sensational manner." The "general discipline" police considered Al-Hussein's style of dress to be a threat to Sudanese societal values and virtues, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has reported. This crime is subject to only one punishment, 40 lashes in public, according to article 152 of the Sudanese...

Zambian journalist Chansa Kabwela has been arrested on bogus charges of circulating obscene materials, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Kabwela, news editor for the Post, was arrested on Monday for circulating two photographs of a woman giving birth without medical aid outside the University Teaching Hospital, which was involved in a health care worker strike at the time...

Prominent journalist and human rights activist Natalya Estemirova has been murdered in Chechnya. Estemirova, 50, was abducted Wednesday morning in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, as she was leaving her apartment for work, Reuters reported. She was found shot in the head and the chest in the neighbouring region of Ingushetia at around 5 p.m.. Estemirova was an activist with the Moscow-based human...

The Palestinian Authority has suspended the operations of Al-Jazeera in the West Bank after the satellite channel aired a controversial interview on Tuesday. The suspension, according to a Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information statement, came on Wednesday and will remain in place until "the judiciary issues a ruling on the subject." The Ministry of Information's actions came a day after Al...

A six-month jail sentence has been passed by a court in Tébessa (460 km east of Algiers) on Rabah Lamouchi, the local correspondent of the national Arabic-language daily Ennahar, on charges of lacking press accreditation and defamation. Lamouchi has been held since his arrest on June 9. “These are trumped-up charges,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “In the absence of a national...

Kyrgyz freelance journalist Almazbek Tashiyev’s died in a hospital in the southern city of Osh on July 12 from the injuries he received when he was allegedly beaten up eight days earlier in the nearby town of Nookat by a police officer for unclear reasons. The authorities are investigating. Tashiyev, who was still conscious when admitted to hospital, said he was beaten up by about 10 policemen in...

Two French government security advisors who were abducted in Mogadishu Tuesday morning had been posing as journalists. Gunmen abducted them from the Sahafi Hotel, located in the safest part of the capital. No group has so far claimed responsibility for their abduction. “Being a journalist is not a cover, it is a profession,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reacted. “We hope these two...

A judge in the northern state of Pará ordered prominent Brazilian journalist Lúcio Flávio Pinto on Monday to pay US$15,000 in damages in a civil libel suit. The decision is part of a systematic pattern of legal harassment against Pinto, who faces more than 10 lawsuits from powerful plaintiffs, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said. Judge Raimundo das Chagas Filho in the Amazonian city of...