News

Bienvenu Yay, an independent journalist and the Mbandaka correspondent for the Kinshasa-based, private television station Congoweb TV, was on February 20 handed down a six-month sentence and ordered to pay US$2,500 in damages for slandering José Makila, deposed governor of Équateur province, according to delayed reports. Mbandaka is located in the northeastern province of Équateur. Yay, according...

Newly appointed Media, Information and Publicity Deputy Minister Jameson Timba has promised to restore media freedom in Zimbabwe by immediately allowing closed publications to reopen and freeing the airwaves in accordance with Article 19 of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), which states that the government shall ensure the immediate processing by the appropriate authorities of all applications...

All copies of the February 18 issue of the Moscow-based biweekly Novaya Gazeta that were to have sold in the Moscow satellite town of Khimki were bought up by the local authorities prior to distribution so that the only way for Khimki residents to be able to read its content was to go the newspaper’s website, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The issue included an open letter from a...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the s decision by judge Tatsiana Miranyuk of a district court in the western city of Brest to order the immediate seizure and destruction of the seventh and eighth issues of the opposition cultural magazine Arche on the grounds that their content was “extremist”. “We are again confronted by an absurd logic,” RSF said. “The administrative and judicial...

The police in the breakaway autonomous region of Somaliland in northern Somalia has arrested Mohamed Abdi Guled, editor of privately-owned weekly Yool appearing in Hargeisa. The journalist is being held on the premises of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Several journalists in Hargeisa said that Mohamed Abdi Guled, better known as "Urad"...

Press freedom groups have rubbished the charges that Sri Lankan newspaper editor Nadesapillai Vithyatharan helped Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels carry out a suicide air strike on Colombo on February 20. Vithyatharan was arrested Thursday in Colombo. According to friends who were with him at the time, police detained Vithyatharan while he was attending the funeral of a friend in...

The Egyptian judiciary has imposed a fine on five journalists for violating a ban on media coverage of a murder trial involving an influential businessman who is a member of President Hosni Mubarak's ruling party, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. In a hearing attended by CPJ Thursday, the Sayyida Zainab Misdemeanors Court sentenced Magdi al-Galad, Yusri al-Badri, and Faruq...

Two independent journalists have arrested on trumped-up charges in Uzbekistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On Sunday, prosecutors in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, detained Dilmurod Saiid on charges of extortion, the independent news website Uznews reported. Saiid writes for a number of independent and pro-opposition websites, local CPJ sources said. In a separate case...

San Francisco may become the largest US city to lose its main daily newspaper after Hearst Corp threatened to sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle unless it can push through more job cuts, Bllomberg News has reported. The publisher, already trying to sell the Seattle Post- Intelligencer, said Tuesday that it would seek voluntary buyouts for a “significant” number of its 1,500 employees after...

The cost of legal fees in defamation cases should be controlled, the British government has announced, according to BBC. The proposals for England and Wales follow claims that high fees are having an effect on freedom of expression. Newspaper lawyers have said that some stories are simply ignored—to avoid the possible expense of a libel case. Justice Minister Bridget Prentice expressed concern...