News

Two journalists were shot and wounded on Friday in Peshawar. The city is the capital of the North West Frontier Province, which adjoins Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas and has been the scene of a number of attacks on foreigners and government officials in the last few weeks. From his hospital bed in Peshawar, Sami Yousafzai, Newsweek magazine's special correspondent in the region...

China has agreed to relax controls on financial news providers in an out-of-court settlement of a dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada. The deal ends Chinese state news agency Xinhua's role as a regulator and the requirement for foreign suppliers of financial information to act through an agent, and provides protection for confidential business information. Calling it a...

The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) has launched its e-newspaper VietnamPlus ( www.vietnamplus.vn) with an aim to provide better information services for local and foreign readers. VietnamPlus will provide more news to readers than any other daily e-newspaper in Viet Nam. Its coverage will range from politics and socio-economics to culture-sports and science and technology from Viet Nam and around the...

The editor-in-chief of a small and vocal opposition newspaper in the Moscow suburbs, who fought a campaign to protect a forest from destruction by real-estate developers, is in critical condition after being assaulted and beaten outside his home. Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, was found unconscious after being badly beaten on Thursday near his home in the...

Journalists from various media outlets in Ecuador have protested the new security measures that have been implemented since October 22 by the National Assembly's Legislative and Auditing Commission, better known as the "Congresillo". According to the new regulations, journalists may only occupy the press room and cannot access the offices of the General Secretariat, the Presidency or any upper...

A freedom of expression advocate has been charged with libel and defamation by the South Sulawesi Regional Police Office in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI) has reported. The chief of the South Sulawesi Regional Police Office, Police Inspector General Sisno Adiwinoto, accused Upi Asmaradana, the coordinator of the Coalition of Journalists against Criminalisation of...

The trial of Baris Pehlivan, producer of the programme “I am a witness” on the 24-hour TV news channel CNN Türk, and Nurettin Yilmaz, a former Kurdish politician and parliamentarian and author of “Witness of the recent past,” will begin in the Istanbul district of Bakirkoy on November 18. Charged with “inciting hatred and hostility” under articles 216 and 218 of the criminal code, they could get...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed dismay at former Bulgarian interior minister Rumen Petkov's public insult of journalist Jurgen Roth and call for violence against him less than a month after Ognyan Stefanov, the editor of the news website Frognews, was seriously injured in a murder attempt. “We are outraged by Rumen Petkov’s irresponsible comments,” Paris-based RSF said. “His call for...

Tunisian authorities have pressed charges against against TV reporter Fahem Boukadous because of his coverage of this year’s protests in the Gafsa mining region, 350 km south of Tunis. This he did for the independent Tunisian TV station Al-Hiwar Attounsi, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Boukadous is also charged with putting foreign news media in contact with labour leaders in Gafsa...

A court in Iraqi Kurdistan Thursday rejected a one-month prison sentence and fine against journalist Shwan Dawdi. On November 4, a criminal court in Sulaymania found Dawdi, editor-in-chief of the Kirkuk-based Hawal newspaper, guilty of three defamation charges filed by retired judge Kemal Mustafa, the former director of the Sulaymania courthouse. Dawdi was jailed the same day and fined 300,000...