News

Ramazan Esergepov, editor in chief of the "Alma-Ata Info" newspaper, is continuing his hunger-strike in National Security Committee (KNB) custody and refusing to be interrogated, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has reported. The report said: [ Link] His wife, Raushan Esergepova, told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service that her husband is insisting that a security service other than the KNB conduct...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on authorities in the northern Russian city of Murmansk to thoroughly investigate the death of Shafig Amrakhov, editor of the online regional news agency RIA 51. Amrakhov died in a Murmansk hospital on January 5, having slipped into a coma after at least one unidentified assailant shot him in the head several times a week earlier. The type of...

Gaston Asseko, the technical director of radio Sainte-Marie, and three leading civil society members held in the same case were released provisionally on January 12, as was a police officer who was arrested with them. Tendance Gabon editor Léon Dieudonné Kougou, who was arrested with Asseko on December 30, was released provisionally on January 7, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported....

A number of prominent Israeli human rights groups have slammed local media outlets for muzzling criticism of the army's deadly offensive in the Gaza Strip. "Opinions criticising the decision to launch the offensive or the army's conduct during the war are hardly heard," the heads of eight rights organisations wrote in a letter to the editors of Israeli papers, television news channels, radios and...

GlobalPost, an online media company focused on foreign news, launched on Monday hoping to fill the dearth of international news coverage in recent years. The site has been launched by veteran journalist Charles Sennott who left the Boston Globe to start his own news organization. The free website, supported by ads, went live Monday and will offer regular dispatches for an American audience to...

A murderer and sex offender has won a permanent ban against his picture appearing in the media in a landmark press freedom case in Northern Ireland, the Independent has reported. The High Court in Belfast ruled the Belfast Sunday Life, a sister paper of the Independent, could not publish unpixelated photos of Kenneth Callaghan. The paper had argued publishing the pictures would help the public...

UK-based European newspaper owner, Mecom, has sold its titles in Germany to one of that country's oldest publishers for €152m ($204m), Financial Times has reported. The company, which is chaired by David Montgomery, former chief executive of the Mirror Group, is burdened with net debt of about €650m and has been in danger of breaching its banking covenants. It should, however, scrape through the...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed recommendations released by the French government in its Green Paper on press reforms in France. The Green Paper, published on January 8, contains 90 recommendations to reform the current functioning of the press in France. An important proposal concerns existing authors' rights to remuneration for multiple-use of a journalistic work...

Algerian authorities have been urged to ensure an effective investigation into a murder attempt against Hafnaoui Ghoul, a journalist on the daily Al-Wassat and a human rights activist, at his home in Djelfa (250km south of Algiers) overnight on January 6-7. A group of hooded assailants armed with a knife were lying in wait for him, gagged him and ripped his clothes. They fled without being...

A woman reporter who worked for a local radio station in a troubled region of southeast Nepal has been stabbed to death by a group of unidentified assailants. Uma Singh, also a member of a rights group, Women's Human Rights Defenders Network, Dhanusha, was attacked late on Sunday while she was sitting in her home in Janakpur, 98 km southeast of Kathmandu. A group of 14 people attacked Singh, a 24...