News

Indictments came down on Wednesday in the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, who was shot on an Oakland street in August 2007. An Alameda County grand jury indicted the leader of the now-closed Your Black Muslim Bakery, Yusuf Bey, on charges that he ordered Bailey killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Associated Press (AP) reported that Alameda County...

José Luis Ortega Vidal, 42, editorial director of the daily Notisur in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz was severely injured after falling off a staircase on the morning of March 3, 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. He was attempting to flee from a former official who was threatening him and other journalists with a gun, according to witnesses quoted in local news...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is closely following the imminent trial of two suspects who have been charged with plotting to murder Ahmed Mira, editor-in-chief of the Sulaymania, Iraq-based ‎magazine Livin. ‎Mira and his lawyer, Othman ‏Sidiq, told CPJ that investigations have been completed and that two ‏suspects have been formally charged with planning to murder Mira. The first...

Veteran Colombian radio journalist José Everardo Aguilar, known for his harsh criticism of local corruption, was gunned down inside his home in southwestern Cauca province on Friday night, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Around 7:15 p.m. on Friday, an unidentified individual posing as a delivery man entered Aguilar's home, saying he had a package of photos, according to...

Iranian-American freelance journalist Roxana Saberi, who was sentenced to eight years in prison by an Iranian Revolutionary Court on charges of spying for the United States, remains on a hunger strike that she started a week ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Her father, Reza Saberi, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) after visiting her in Tehran's Evin Prison on her 32...

North Korea has announced that it would try American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee on unspecified criminal charges, according to international news reports. The Associated Press (AP) reported that a dispatch from the country said the pair would be tried for "confirmed charges" without specifying the nature of those charges or a timetable for the legal proceedings. "The relevant agencies of...

Park Dae-sung, who blogs under the name Minerva, was acquitted of charges in South Korea on April 20, 2009, under a rarely used law of "spreading false information with the intent of harming the public interest." The Seoul court that heard his case ruled that Park wrote without malicious intent, even if his articles were misleading his articles, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has...

A high court judge in Singapore ruled on March 19, 2009, that Melanie Kirkpatrick, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, was in contempt of court for two articles and a letter to the editor published by the Dow Jones-owned Wall Street Journal Asia last year, according to international news reports. Kirkpatrick was ordered to pay SG$10,000 (US$6,549), according to the...

Indonesia's Supreme Court reversed its own 2007 ruling on April 16, 2009, and dismissed a $106 million case against the Hong Kong-based Time Warner publication that had been filed by the country's late President Suharto and continued by his heirs, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The decision marked the end of a lawsuit launched shortly before Suharto's death in 1999, a few...

The office of Uthayan, a Tamil-language daily, in Jaffna was hit with an explosive device around 11 p.m. on March 24, 2009. Most Sri Lankan media reports identified the weapon as a hand grenade. It was the fifth time in three years that the office had been attacked, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. There were no injures to the small number of staff still working at the...