News

A Canadian journalist was abducted this week while gathering materials for a documentary in the Bannu district in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, on the border with Afghanistan, officials said Thursday. The English-language Pakistani paper the News International, citing unnamed sources, first reported the story on Wednesday. Beverly Giesbrecht, 52, also known as Khadija Abdul...

Veteran Mexican crime reporter Armando Rodríguez was shot to death Thursday morning while in his car in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. An unidentified assailant shot Rodríguez, 40, a reporter for the local daily El Diario, at least eight times with a 9mm weapon, according to Mexican news reports and CPJ interviews. Rodríguez was sitting...

Russian newspaper Arsenyevskiye Vesti has received an official warning from the prosecutor's office of the Vladivostok Frunzensky district, which accused it of disseminating materials containing elements of extremism. The warning was issued over an article titled 'One Nation - One Constitution' published in the 3-9 September 2008 edition of Arsenyevskiye Vesti. The article dealt with the killing...

The National Communications Council (CNC), the media regulatory body in Guinea, has ordered the management of Familia FM, a community radio station in Conakry, to cease transmission for allegedly broadcasting information that the CNC claimed could "disturb the public peace" of the country. The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent reported on November 4 that following the...

Judicial authorities in Argentina have ordered the release of Gregorios Ríos, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting the murder of José Luiz Cabezas, a photographer killed in January 1997, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has reported. "We shall never forget Cabezas," said Celso Schroeder, president of the Federation of Latin America and Caribbean Journalists (FEPALC)...

The Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI) has launched a Justice Denied Campaign website which will carry stories meant to sound the alarm, and encourage those with the power to take action to do so. The campaign highlights the cases of 10 journalists from different regions of the world who have been silenced by imprisonment or physical attack, including murder. For them, justice has...

Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip for a week. The move is being seen as a serious violation of press freedom. According to media reports, military officials in Israel said only humanitarian aid workers and Palestinian patients are allowed to enter or leave Gaza as a result of the resumed shelling of rockets into Israel by Palestinians militants from Gaza. Israeli...

Zakari Alzouma, the editor the independent weekly Opinions, was released Tuesday, but given a three-month suspended prison sentence for supposedly libelling interior minister Albadé Abouba, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Alzouma was arrested on October 30 in response to a complaint by the interior minister about an article reporting that he “took advantage” of Prime Minister Seini...

The Indian embassy in Sweden has denied visas to journalists for writing critical reports about social issues in the country, including trafficking of women in Mumbai and changing gender roles in India. Freelance journalist Ulrika Nandra and foreign correspondent of daily Göteborgs-Posten, Marina Malmgren, are two of the Swedish journalists whose visa applications have been rejected, according to...

A Somalian freelance journalist has been arrested for reportedly filming two bombings last month, the Mogadishu-based National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has reported. Hadis Mohammed Hadis was arrested on November 3 at Igal International Airport in Hargeisa city by officers from Somaliland's Criminal Investigations Department (CID). According to local journalists, the arrest came after...