News

Two photographers reported being shot at by bodyguards outside the home of Brazilian supermodel Giselle Bündchen in the western Costa Rican city of Santa Teresa de Cóbano on the afternoon of April 4, 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local and international news reports. No one was injured. Yuri Cortez, a Salvadoran photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP)...

Fiji's interim government must relax its reporting restrictions after the government declared a 30-day state of emergency on Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded. Three foreign reporters have since been ordered to be deported and one local journalist detained, according to international news reports, and newspapers and broadcasts have been censored. Australian Sean Dorney and...

Moldovan authorities have been arresting journalists and even using violence against them amid angry protests and rioting about the results of last weekend’s parliamentary elections, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Both Moldovan and Romanian journalists have been affected. “We appeal to the authorities to act with care and restraint,” RSF said. “They have a duty to ensure...

Authorities in Republic of Congo should immediately lift their ban on private TV station Canal Bénédiction Plus (CB Plus), the Committee to Protect Journalists has said. The ban was enacted in February in response to political coverage in the lead-up to presidential elections in July. CB Plus was forced off the air on February 12 shortly after it aired footage of a 1991 national political...

On April 2, 2009, a professional mixed-martial arts fighter and boxer was charged with assaulting a food critic for the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York. Police are investigating whether the assault was a premeditated attack in retaliation for a critical review of an area restaurant the year before. The professional fighter, Jerry Spiegel, was arraigned on two counts of misdemeanour...

Following Thursday's release of independent journalists Sakit Zakhidov and Asif Marzili in Azerbaijan, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged Azerbaijani authorities to free the remaining journalists serving jail terms on trumped-up criminal charges. Zakhidov, a prominent satirist and commentator for the pro-opposition daily Azadlyg in Baku, was released early Thuesady morning under...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the conditions in which journalists and cyber-dissidents are being held in Iran and the arbitrary nature of their detention, and has called for their release. The organisation issued its appeal after the US-based parents of a detained American-Iranian journalist were able to visit her in Tehran's Evin prison on April 6, 2009. "It is very good news that...

The Algerian government has decided to ban the distribution of the current issues of three French publications – L'Express, Marianne and Journal du Dimanche – on the eve of the April 9, 2009 election (where the President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is running for the third term), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported.. "This censorship is disgraceful," Paris-based RSF said, expressing outrage at...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has written to the king of Bahrain to protest the recent deterioration of press freedom in the country and his government's ongoing campaign against critical or opposition websites and blogs. The crackdown against those sites has resulted in dozens of them being blocked inside the kingdom, according to local and international human rights and press...

China's inconsistency in applying its own new rules and regulations for non-mainland journalists amounts to obstacle-setting in which bureaucrats continue to restrict reporting regardless of government edicts, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has said. According to local media reports, officers of the Sichuan provincial government sought to bar journalists from entering...