News

The constitutional chamber of the Costa Rican Supreme Court ruled on March 21, 2014, that the government's secret monitoring of phone records of the San José-based daily Diario Extra as part of a leak investigation was unconstitutional, according to news reports. Diario Extra reported in January that the Judicial Investigative Organism (OIJ), along with agents from the narcotics and organised...

Six members of a political party called Libertad Democrática Renovada (LIDER) have brought an abusive complaint against the editor of the magazine Contrapoder, Juan Luis Font, accusing him of criminal libel and “ideological and material falsehood” in an article published on March 21. After the complaint was filed, Font immediately issued a public apology for the article’s mistakes and...

Cassien Ntamuhanga, the manager of the Kigali-based Christian radio station Amazing Grace, has been missing since the evening of April 7, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Ntamuhanga’s last contact with his family was at around 7p.m. on April 7, when he was leaving Amahoro Stadium after a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Tutsi genocide. He telephoned his younger brother...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed concern over reports that Ukrainian border guards have denied entry to the country to several Russian journalists over the past few days. Reports say that journalists with the newly reshuffled RIA Novosti news agency, TV channels Rossiya and Russia Today, the business daily Kommersant, and Forbes-Russia magazine have all been turned down at the...

Two journalists were arrested in Egypt on Wednesday and new charges filed against three others, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the Egyptian government's renewed crackdown on the press as presidential elections approach in May. "If the Egyptian government is serious about organizing free and fair presidential elections, it must end this campaign...

At least three news outlets and two journalists have been attacked and harassed in the past three days in eastern Ukraine, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting news reports and press freedom groups. Tensions have been on the rise in eastern Ukraine following Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, and a statement on Friday last by ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, who...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has hailed the decision by the European Court of Justice on April 8 invalidating the European Union's mandatory data retention directive. The court found that the indiscriminate collection of metadata poses a "particularly serious" and disproportional interference with the right to privacy. Mass metadata surveillance is "likely to generate in the minds of the...

Police in the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland on April 3 raided the Hargeisa offices of the independent Somali-language paper Haatuf and its sister English-language weekly, Somaliland Times, and suspended them indefinitely, according to local journalists and news reports. The police cited a court order that said the papers should be shut down for publishing false news and insulting...

Venezuelan TV journalist Nairobi Pinto has been missing since April 6 when her sister saw two masked individuals kidnap her outside her home on the outskirts of Caracas, according to Reporters Without Borders. Pinto works for the TV news channel Globovisión as director of all its regional news bureaux. Her kidnappers have not contacted her family at any time since her abduction. “Journalists...

Roger Shuler, whose blog, Legal Schnauzer, specialises in allegations of corruption and scandal in Republican circles in Alabama, was released from jail on March 26, 2014, after spending more than five months in prison on contempt of court charges, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Shuler was arrested on October 1, 2013, for failing to comply with a preliminary injunction...