News

Television journalist and NBC Bureau chief Tim Russert died of heart attack on June 13, aged 58. Russert died while at work in the NBC news bureau. "It is my sad duty to report this afternoon that my friend and colleague Tim Russert ... collapsed and died while at work in the NBC news bureau in Washington, DC," People quoted colleague Tom Brokaw, as saying in an NBC bulletin. "This news division...

The Chinese police arrested Internet writer Zeng Hongling in Chengdu, the capital of the earthquake-hit province of Sichuan, on Monday for publishing personal accounts of the earthquake on overseas Chinese-language websites, according to news reports and a Chinese press freedom advocate. Three days later, a well-known Internet publisher and human rights advocate, Huang Qi, went missing in Chengdu...

(Glasnost Defence Foundation): Larissa Yudina, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Sovetskaya Kalmykia Segodnya" (SKS), was killed in Elista, capital of the Republic of Kalmykia, on 7 June 1998. For several years prior to the murder, attempts were made to close down Kalmykia's sole independent newspaper. Yudina had been unlawfully dismissed and steps had been taken to get the staff out into the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed concern over the June 7 arrest of Solidzhon Abdurakhmonov, an independent Uzbek journalist for a number of international news outlets. Police arrested Abdurakhmonov in the city of Nukus for alleged drug possession, independent news website Uznews reported. If convicted, Abdurakhmonov faces up to five years in prison, Uznews editor and CPJ...

Angered by film footage and photographs depicting the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis which have appeared in media outside of Burma, the junta is now undertaking to seize all still photography and video cameras being used by small-scale professionals, and even those that are privately owned by households, Mizzima News has reported. In particular, authorities have targeted smallscale, private...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) expressed alarm over the report that a woman journalist, Jameela Rishteen Qadiry, reportedly received telephone calls threatening her with the same fate as that of murdered BBC journalist Abdul Samad Rohani in Afghanistan. According to information received from an IFJ affiliate, the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association (AIJA), Qadiry, a...

Israel’s ambassador to the United States expressed regret over the death of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip in April, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “Israel’s Ambassador Sallai Meridor met yesterday with the Committee to Protect Journalists delegation at their request,” said a statement from the Israeli...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) voiced alarm Friday about a programme broadcast by state television stations Namangan TV and Ferghana TV on June 10 that attacked Radio Free Europe (RFE), a US-funded international radio station based in Prague, and gave the addresses of its Uzbek correspondents and the schools attended by their children. “We are extremely disturbed by this smear campaign against...

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s cabinet Friday unanimously approved a bill that would restrict the use of phone taps to investigations of crimes carrying prison terms of at least 10 years and would impose heavy fines or jail terms on journalists and news media that publish transcripts of phone taps without a judge’s permission. “There would seem to be ulterior motives to this bill as it...

The Iranian government is continuing its persecution of cyber-feminists — women who use online publications to defend their rights. Nine were arrested yesterday for organising a meeting in Tehran to commemorate a big demonstration they staged two years ago. They were all released this morning. “The authorities have tried yet again to intimidate women who are just demanding their rights,” Paris...