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An Iraqi court on Sunday ordered the release of a freelance photographer working for Reuters after being held by US forces since early September, the news agency has reported. The Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled there was no evidence against Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, and ordered that the US military release him from Camp Cropper prison near Baghdad airport. Iraqi prosecutors acknowledged in...

The Delhi operations of the Sakaal Times of the Pune-based Sakaal Media Group have been closed down without informing employees in advance. On November 30, the newspaper's journalists were taken aback to find the office locked and a lockout notice pasted on the doors. The anger of the 70-odd employees is not so much about the shutdown but that the Sakaal management did not inform them personally...

A team of journalists working for US media company National Public Radio had a narrow escape from a car bombing in Baghdad after Iraqi soldiers warned them that a device had been attached to the bottom of their armoured car. The bomb exploded about 15 feet from the NPR journalists. It destroyed the car but nobody was injured. Ivan Watson, a 33 year-old reporter for NPR on temporary assignment in...

The treatment meted out by the French police to Vittorio de Filippis, former managing editor of leftwing daily Libération, has prompted widespread condemnation and furore. Filippis was manhandled, handcuffed, humiliated in front of his sons, twice forced to strip and submit to body cavity searches and interrogated without lawyers by an investigating magistrate— all over a two-year-old libel case...

Ramattan news agency has closed down all its West Bank offices and suspended its website operations after security officers loyal to Paliestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raided its headquarters in Ramallah and summoned eight employees for interrogation. Ramattan has accused PA of waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against its staff in the West Bank. The independent agency...

A Belgian TV journalist and his crew were assaulted while reporting on AIDS in Central China, Reuters has reported. After interviewing several representatives of AIDS groups on Thursday, Belgian journalist Tom Van de Weghe and his production team from Flemish public television VRT were beaten and robbed of cash and equipment by 12 men recruited by authorities in Henan province, a VRT spokesperson...

A regional governor in Somalia's breakway Puntland region said Sunday they had made contact with the abductors of four journalists, including a Briton and a Spaniard, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. Bossaso Governor Musa Gueleh Yusuf said they were "trying to have them released as soon as possible." He said, "The kidnappers are asking for a ransom, but we refuse negotiations. We just want...

The body of Sabina Sehgal Saikia, a consulting editor with the Times of India, was today consigned to flames at the Lodhi Road cremation grounds in New Delhi. The body of Sabina, who was trapped on the sixth floor of the Taj Hotel during the Mumbai terrorist attacks, was discovered on Saturday among a pile of bodies in a section of the hotel. Sabina had been SMSing her family and friends till past...

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has welcomed the defeat of so-called BKA law (anti-terrorism law) in the Bundesrat (Upper House of the German Parliament). Several Federal States abstained from the voting. "This is a very important victory for press freedom in Germany and in Europe," said EFJ President Arne König. "Our German affiliates, also in cooperation with all major media...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has urged newspaper readers throughout the Americas to sign an open letter to Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva calling on him to have light shed on the death of television programme host José Carlos Mesquita on March 10, 1998 in Ouro Preto do Oeste, Rondônia, Brazil. Mesquita had exposed drug trafficking and misuse of funds intended for the...