News

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over Russia's denial of entry to a British journalist into the country last week. Freelance journalist Simon Pirani had a valid, multiple-entry visa to Russia when he was stopped by border guards at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on June 17. Officials handed him a “declaration of return,” which stated that he could not enter the country...

An Egyptian appeals court has upheld a guilty verdict against newspaper editor Ibrahim Eissa who wrote stories questioning president Hosni Mubarak's health. Eissa, editor of the independent daily Al-Dustour, was sentenced Sunday to two months imprisonment. Eissa was originally convicted in March and sentenced to six months on charges of reporting and publishing "false" information that questioned...

Free expression defenders have won a small, but important victory: the UN Human Rights Council has dropped efforts of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and some African countries to endorse the concept of defamation of religion at its latest session. Following calls from IFEX members ARTICLE 19 and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), among other press freedom...

LIFE, the venerable photojournalism magazine that was closed down earlier this year, is all set for a new life on the Web. LIFE.com will be jointly owned and operated by Time Inc and Getty Images, and will provide access to the most comprehensive iconic and professional photography collections available anywhere online. Andy Blau, president of LIFE and SVP of Time Inc Interactive, and Catherine...

Leading Yemen journalist Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani has been released from prison shortly after President Ali Abdullah Saleh granted him amnesty and ordered cancellation of his six-year jail sentence that was handed to him earlier for conspiring with anti-government rebels. After leaving prison, al-Khaiwani told the News Yemen website that his release "is a victory for all Yemeni journalists and...

Israeli journalists have spoken out against restrictions on freedom of movement facing reporters in Palestine and proposed a joint forum with Palestinian colleagues to deal with a range of problems facing media and journalists in the region. In a meeting with a delegation from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in Jerusalem recently leaders of the Jerusalem Association of...

Afghan freelance journalist Jawed Ahmad recently freed after spending 11 months in a US military prison says he was arrested at the suggestion of the Canadian forces. According to a Canadian Press report, Ahmad, known by the nickname Jojo among western journalists in Afghanistan, said, "It was Canadians who told them I was a risk." Ahmad, 22, was detained October 26, 2007, at a NATO base near the...

The Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) has defamed the city-state's two most powerful leaders, Singapore's High Court has ruled. The publisher and editor of the magazine, owned by Dow Jones & Co, are to pay damages to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, after defaming them in an article published in 2006, Reuters reported. The damages for the...

Ossayd Amarneh, a cameraman employed by Al-Aqsa TV, the mouthpiece of the Islamic party Hamas, was arrested in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on September 21, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). It is the fourth time Amarneh has been arrested in the past 12 months. The Palestinian Authority security services constant harass Al-Aqsa journalists in order to rein in Hamas’s propaganda and...

The editor in chief of Bulgarian news site Frog News was beaten unconscious by three masked attackers Monday evening in Sofia. The 54-year old journalist Ognyan Stefanov was attacked soon after he left a restaurant as the three men said they were policemen before they started battering the victim, Sofia News Agency reported. The editor and his family had recently received anonymous phone calls...