News

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced repeated efforts by authorities in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia to shut down the regional news website Ingushetiya—one of the few remaining independent news outlets covering the volatile North Caucasus—for alleged extremism. On June 6, Kuntsevo district court in Moscow ordered the closure of the website, alleging it contained...

Police in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek raided the newsroom of independent newspaper De-Facto on June 14, taking all its financial records, confiscating computers, and sealing the newsroom, the independent regional news website Ferghana has reported. The paper was shut down after it published a letter to Kyrgyzstan’s president and other public officials that alleged official corruption. The raid...

The publisher and editor of an Urdu-language newspaper in Houston, Pakistan Times USA, has received telephone death threats, and thousands of copies of the free weekly were removed in bulk from dozens of locations in southeastern Texas, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The threats and theft of the papers came after the Pakistan Times USA published an advertisement by the...

Three men have been charged for the killing of Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 but the actual assassin remains at large, investigators said on Wednesday, according to news reports. In a June 18 statement announcing the completion of the inquiry, the investigative committee of the Prosecutor-General's Office named the men accused of her assassination as Sergei...

The Algerian government is becoming increasingly intolerant of criticism. The communications ministry stripped the Agence France-Presse (AFP) bureau chief and the Reuters correspondent in Algiers of their accreditation on June 10, and a court fined the daily Liberté's publisher and editor and one of its cartoonists for defamation on June 16. "The lack of tolerance for outspoken journalists has...

The police in Unzbekistan has arrested an independent journalist in the city of Nukus for alleged drug possession, independent news website Uznews has reported. If convicted, Solidzhon Abdurakhmonov faces up to five years in prison, Uznews editor and CPJ International Press Freedom awardee Galima Bukharbaeva told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Abdurakhmonov was...

Al-Qaida-linked militants freed a popular TV news anchor, and her two assistants late Tuesday, more than a week after snatching them in the volatile southern Philippines island of Jolo. The abductors, identified by police as Abu Sayyaf militants, released ABS-CBN anchor Ces Drilon and the two other captives on Jolo island around 11 p.m. following talks with negotiators, said Director Avelino Razon...

Kwekwe journalist Blessed Mhlanga was acquitted Wednesday last over charges of contravening Section 80 (1)(a)(2) of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), which prohibits the publication of falsehoods. However, his colleagues Wycliff Nyarota and James Muonwa are facing trial, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). The state alleges that on March 26...

A criminal bench of the Superior Court of Justice in Áncash on Friday last acquitted Moisés Julca Orrillo, accused of murdering journalist Antonio de la Torre Echeandía on February 14, 2004. According to the Bench's ruling, there is evidence of guilt but no conclusive proof against Julca Orrillo, therefore the presumption of his innocence had to prevail, according to Instituto Prensa y Sociedad...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has accused the Guanajuato state government in Mexico of discrimination against the newspapers "a.m." and "Correo" in its placement of official advertising, in addition to insulting them and refusing to provide them with information. The state government's actions were seen as revenge for the papers' critical editorial stance. In a letter to Guanajuato...