News

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has hailed the provisional release of French photographer Jean-Paul Ney, who had been held in Abidjan since late December 2007 in connection with a conspiracy to overthrow the Ivorian government known as the “Christmas in Abidjan” affair. The provisional release of Ney on Wednesday and all the other persons held in connection with the case was ordered this afternoon...

Authorities in Rostov-on-Don must launch a criminal investigation into a possible attack on the editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper who was found unconscious with a head wound in the early morning of April 30, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, editor of Korruptsiya i Prestupnost (Corruption and Crime), was found at the foot of a staircase in...

American reporter Diane Bukowski, who was found guilty on May 1 of two felony counts of resisting, obstructing, opposing, and endangering two Michigan state troopers while covering a crime scene, is facing prosecution. Bukowski, 60, will face sentencing, which may include a fine of up to $4,000 as well as up to four years in prison or both, on June 1. Bukowski is a freelance reporter for the...

Santa María El Oro Mayor Martín Silvestre Herrera denied any connection to Sunday's murder of local journalist Carlos Ortega Samper in the northern Durango state, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting Mexican press reports. Unidentified assailants shot and killed Ortega near his house in Santa María El Oro , 320 km (200 miles) north of the state capital, on Sunday...

There has been an alarming wave of politically motivated criminal lawsuits in Iraq's Kurdistan filed against mostly independent journalists as well as blatant violations of the region's new press law. The law has no provisions for jail terms for journalists, but journalists are still being imprisoned, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. In a letter to the prime minister of the...

A Mexican journalist who was critical of local authorities in the northern state of Durango was fatally shot by unidentified assailants on Sunday. In a piece published a day before the killing, the reporter wrote that he had been threatened by local government officials. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on local and federal authorities to thoroughly and expeditiously...

After confiscating thousands of copies of a critical independent newspaper, authorities laid siege on May 4 to the paper's offices in Aden, Yemen. The daily, Al-Ayyam, has been covering the ongoing conflict in the country's southern region. Bashraheel Bashraheel, general manager of Al-Ayyam, told CPJ that after three consecutive days of authorities confiscating thousands of copies of the newspaper...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has written to Rwandan information minister Louise Mushikiwabo expressing deep concern about the “temporary suspension” of BBC broadcasts in the local language Kinyarwanda because of comments about the 1994 genocide which Rwandan citizens made in one of these broadcasts. “We are aware that the genocide continues to be a highly sensitive subject in your country and...

The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Armenian authorities to apprehend three assailants who attacked Argishti Kivirian, editor of the independent news website Armenia Today. The unidentified men beat Kivirian early Thursday morning, leaving him hospitalised in serious condition, Zhanna Alexanian, president of the Yerevan-based organization Journalists for Human Rights, told CPJ. "We...

A Panama City court has sentenced leading Panamanian journalist Jean Marcel Chéry to two years in prison on trespassing charges stemming from a years-long series of complaints filed by a Supreme Court justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. It has called on Justice Winston Spadafora to end his politically motivated harassment. Judge Ricardo Mazza Moreno of the Second...