News

A Macedonian journalist suspected raping and killing at least at two women and then reporting on the crimes committed suicide in jail, news reports said Monday, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). Vlado Tanevski, a correspondent for several newspapers including the Utrinski Vesnik daily, was found drowned in a bucket of water, Macedonian media quoted police as saying. There was no evidence...

Mallam Saidu Sarki Usman, the political editor of the private daily newspaper Leadership, based in Abuja, Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory, was ordered on June 20 to be remanded into prison custody. The order was issued by a Chief Magistrate Court presided over by Alhaji Salihu Attahiru in Minna, Niger State, North-central Nigeria. Usman is accused of allegedly publishing an "injurious...

Zimbabwean police have charged a street vendor for listening to a news programme on the Zimbabwe broadcast of the Voice of America, reports Zimonline news agency. Noel Tichawana was arrested in early June 2008 and will appear in court on July 15 to answer to charges of "committing criminal nuisance" after he was caught listening to the programme Studio 7, which broadcasts political, economic and...

Journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, whose residence was searched by Mexican military personnel in May 2008 and who has subsequently been harassed by members of the Army, has sought asylum in the United States, fearing for his life and that of his son. The correspondent for the regional newspaper El Diario del Noroeste in Ascensión, a municipality in the northwestern state of Chihuahua, Gutiérrez...

Saikou Ceesay, a reporter with the Banjul-based opposition Foroyaa newspaper, was arrested on June 15 and detained overnight in the Kotu police station in Kombo province, about 11 kilometres southwest of Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) sources reported that Ceesay was arrested at the police station while investigating the arrest and detention of pro...

A three-year jail sentence in absentia has been handed down to journalist Amal Eisa, formerly of the Qatari daily al-Sharq, for "defamation" on the basis of a complaint from the Hamad public hospital in Doha. "This extremely harsh penalty, even though partly linked to the absence of the journalist from the trial hearing, sends a dangerous signal to all journalists in the emirate," Paris-based...

Newspaper publisher John Woods was convicted in the Rarotonga High Court on two charges of contempt of court, reports Cook Island News. Fines amounting to approx. US$60 and court costs were imposed on Woods. The convictions were handed down against the 55-year-old Arorangi resident by Justice of the Peace John Kenning. Both charges relate to the breach of a gag order handed down by Justice...

Two unidentified men beat and stabbed Luis Pablo Guardado Negrete, deputy director of the local daily Noticias de la Bahía, on Saturday afternoon inside his office in the western Mexican state of Nayarit. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the local authorities to investigate the attack and bring all those responsible to justice. At 3 p.m. on Saturday, two men arrived at the...

A judge in Niger ordered the conditional release of a reporter for Radio France International (RFI) on Monday, but he stayed in jail because the public prosecutor lodged an appeal, a judicial source and RFI said, according to Reuters. Moussa Kaka, director of a private radio station and correspondent for French state-owned RFI, will stay in jail until an appeal court rules on his case. Kaka was...

An Iranian newspaper has been banned for criticising the performance of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the last three years, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported quoting official news agency IRNA on Sunday. The daily Tehran Emrouz (Tehran Today) had criticised Ahmadinejad's economic and foreign policies in a special bulletin Saturday on the occasion of the third anniversary of his election. "We have...