News

Reporters Without Borders voiced deep concern today about the death threats that Joseph Guyler Delva, a news programme host on privately-owned Radio Mélodie FM, has been getting since 25 October. The head of a press freedom NGO called SOS Journalistes, Delva is also the director of an Independent Commission for Supporting Investigations into Murders of Journalists (CIAPEAJ), created on 10 August...

(PROBIDAD/IFEX) - Dagoberto Rodríguez, director of Radio Cadena Voces (RCV) radio station, fled the country with his family on 1 November 2007 after being informed by police that a death squad intended to kill him within 72 hours. PROBIDAD and Rodríguez believe that the alleged murder plot is related to his work, given that no one is aware of any other possible motive. Rodríguez, whose travel...

(BIANET/IFEX) - Necati Abay, publisher and spokesperson for the Platform of Solidarity with Imprisoned Journalists, wrote an article entitled "Another Journalist Has Been Murdered, the 'Good Kids' killed Hrant Dink" shortly after Dink's murder on 19 January 2007. Following the publication of the article, 20-year-old Mert Sahin threatened him with death. Sahin was then a student in Akyazi, in the...

(RSF/IFEX) - Germán David Almendárez Amador was arrested for the second time on 28 October 2007 on suspicion of fatally shooting journalist and comedian Carlos Salgado of Radio Cadena Voces on 18 October. Aged 29, Almendárez had been arrested two days earlier, but was released a few hours later for lack of evidence. A 9 mm pistol believed to be the murder weapon was found in one of Almendárez's...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has asked Yahoo! to take advantage of the 6 November 2007 Congress hearing to set the record straight on the company's collaboration with the Chinese authorities. Congress is investigating sworn statements Yahoo! made during a February 2006 Congress hearing regarding its role in cyberdissident Shi Tao's arrest and conviction on a charge of "illegally...

PATNA: Don-turned-MLA Anant Singh, known as Chhote Sarkar of Mokama, on Thursday embarrassed the "sushasan sarkar" of his JD (U) party in Bihar when he and his henchmen thrashed a TV reporter and his cameraman. Prakash Singh and Habib Ali, who work for a private news channel, had gone to Singh's house seeking his reaction on the murder of a girl who had alleged sexual exploitation by him. The MLA...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden: What started with a kiss in a Stockholm bar turned into an embarrassment for the Swedish government Thursday as the prime minister's senior aide stepped down, apologizing for a wine-soaked evening out with a TV journalist. Ulrica Schenstrom, the top civil servant in the office of conservative Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, said in a statement she deeply regretted having...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Wall Street Journal said on Sunday that its Web site now has 1 million subscribers, a milestone for a site that charges for access even as other sites are throwing themselves open for free. It also comes as News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch, who is buying the Journal's parent company Dow Jones & Company Inc, contemplates scrapping the Journal's subscription model in favor of...

(Mizzima/IFEX) - After about two weeks of slow Internet line recovery, users in Rangoon said on 1 November 2007 that access to the World Wide Web has been cut off once again. Internet users in Rangoon said the Internet lines, which have been accessible for 24 hours a day since mid-October, once again went off at about 8 a.m. (local time). Officials at Myanmar Teleport, one of only two Internet...

(FMM/IFEX) - The Free Media Movement (FMM) expresses its dismay that the Government of Sri Lanka put out a gazette prohibiting news reporting on proposed military operations in the country. It was issued under the emergency regulations and called "Prohibition on publication and transmission of sensitive military information". The gazette would have made it illegal to report material "which...