News

The first edition of Business Bhaskar, the Hindi financial daily from Dainik Bhaskar was launched in Bhopal on June 27, televisionpoint.com has reported. Business Bhaskar will have an initial print run of more than 20,000 copies and the broadsheet is 12 colour pages, priced at Rs 1.50. To expand the business of Business Bhaskar, the company proposes to launch at least three more editions in Tier...

The Press Council of India has initiated suo motu action in the arrest of two journalists of a vernacular newspaper in Andhra Pradesh, the Press Trust of India has reported. In a letter to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, the media body said that the incident prima facie appears to pose threats to the free functioning of the Press. "As the statue of the Press Council statute...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the abduction, torture, and forcible psychiatric hospitalisation of Sazak Durdymuradov, a contributing reporter for the Turkmen Service of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in the Western city of Bakhaden. According to RFE/RL, Durdymuradov was seized by agents of the secret police (MNB) from his Bakhaden home on June 20...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed shock at the wave of violence in the northern state of Chihuahua that has cost the life of Candelario Pérez Pérez, a 32-year-old journalist who worked as an editor on his father's crime magazine, Sucesos. Pérez was gunned down in the border town of Ciudad Juárez on June 23. The motive for the murder is not yet known. "So far there is no evidence of a...

Despite the arrest of a suspect in the murder of New Zealand photojournalist Trent Keegan, questions about the killing remain unanswered, New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Thursday. Kenyan police are holding a suspect in Keegan's murder, a Kenyan police spokesman told CPJ. The police have not released details, but spokesman Eric Kiraithe told CPJ that police have not found...

Sazak Durdymuradov, a contributing reporter for the Turkmen Service of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in the Western city of Bakhaden, has been abducted, tortured and subjected to forcible psychiatric hospitalisation. According to RFE/RL, Durdymuradov was seized by agents of the secret police (MNB) from his Bakhaden home on June 20 and forcibly taken to a local psychiatric...

A Baku court Tuesday convicted the editor of a small, minority newspaper on a treason charge and to sentence him to 10 years in prison. Novruzali Mamedov, editor of now-defunct Talyshi Sado (Voice of the Talysh), was tried in closed-door proceedings that began in March, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Judge Shakir Alekserov of the Court for Grave Crimes read...

Systematic harassment of the Association of Iranian Journalists by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government took a new turn on June 24 when Labour Minister Mohammad Jahromi threatened to dissolve the organisation. "This is yet another attempt by the Iranian authorities to silence those who defend free expression in Iran," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. "It is vital that...

Three rights organisations - ANHRI, the Arab Council for the Support of a Fair Trial and the Hisham Mubarak Law Center - submitted a petition to a deputy demanding an investigation into the brutal assault of journalist Kamal Murad of "Al-Fajr" newspaper by three police officers on June 17. The police officers, who are from Rahmanya Centre in Buhaira Governate in the Delta region, badly beat Murad...

Rafael Velasco Salas, deputy director of the bimonthly publication Zona Norte and correspondent in Chiapas for the Oaxaca-based newspaper Noticias, Voz e Imagen, was assaulted and threatened with murder by Humberto Cernuda Hernández, brother of Josefa Cernuda - the president of the Family Services Unit (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, DIF) of the city of Pichucalco in the state of Chiapas...