News

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Burma Media Association (BMA) have welcomed the release of Saw Myint Than, the former chief correspondent of Flower News Journal, a privately-owned magazine. He was held for seven weeks without being tried and without having any chance to defend himself. “We are relieved by Saw Myint Than’s release, just a few weeks after the release of U Win Tin, Burma’s...

Democracies embroiled in wars outside their own territory, such as the United States and Israel, have fallen further in the World Press Freedom Index 2008 of Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Several emerging countries, especially in Africa and the Caribbean, on the other hand, give better and better guarantees for media freedom. India, ranked 120th last year, has risen only two notches up to 118...

An Afghan appeals court has sentenced journalist Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh to 20 years in prison for blasphemy overturning a death sentence ordered by a provincial court. Kambakhsh was accused of printing and distributing an article from the Internet about Islam and women’s rights, on which he had written some comments about the prophet Mohammed’s failings on that issue. "The court has sentenced...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned an Egyptian court’s decision on Saturday to levy steep fines against an editor and reporter for an independent weekly that published a satirical piece about a prominent cleric. A criminal court in Al-Geeza ordered El-Fegr editor Adel Hammouda and writer Mohamed al-Baz to pay fines of 80,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,341) apiece on charges that...

Nigerian journalist Eiphraim Audu was shot dead by six unknown gunmen near his home on Wednesday in Lafia, central Nigeria, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ0 has reported quoting local journalists and the Nigerian Union of Journalists. Audu was a senior radio journalist with the Nasarawa State Broadcasting Service and the chairman of the credential committee of the forthcoming Nigeria...

Dominique Makeli, a former reporter with state-owned Radio Rwanda who had held since 1994 on a vague, genocide-related charge, has been released, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Makeli’s release on October 13 was a result of his acquittal by a gacaca (popular tribunal) in the Kigali district of Nyarugenge on October 5. Detained since September 18, 1994, he had been transferred from...

The Supreme Court has expressed its strong disapproval of obscenity and violence being telecast on country's TV channels and said it has become impossible for families to sit together and watch the programmes being telecast, the Press Trust of India (PTI) has reported. A three-judge Bench of Justices BN Aggrawal, GS Singhvi and Aftab Alam on Wednesday granted three weeks' time to the Union...

Daughters of sex workers, who live in the dingy lanes and bylanes that criss-cross the red-light districts of Bihar, have been bringing out a monthly handwritten magazine, Jugnu, since 2004, says a Times of India report. Nikhat, a 22-year-old matriculate, now a regular student of Intermediate at Niteshwar College (Muzaffarpur), edits the magazine. She has been doing the job since 2004 when she was...

The lawyer of Afghan reporter Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh sentenced to death on blasphemy charges accused authorities Thursday of holding his client beyond a legal deadline, as the young man neared a full year in detention, says an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report. The appeal of Kambakhsh -- arrested last October and sentenced to death by a primary court in January -- has been repeatedly delayed...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed concern at the Slovenian government’s use of diplomatic pressure in response to corruption allegations made in an episode of the Finnish investigative documentary "MOT". According to IPI, the Slovenian government has been using diplomatic channels to exert pressure on the Finnish government following the broadcast on September 1, 2008 of an...