News

Reporters Without Borders calls on the authorities to investigate armed attacks on Radio Nuevo Mundo installations on 4 September in Salamá, in Baja Verapaz department, and on 11 September in Guatemala City. The ongoing elections have been marred by an alarming level of violent crime and the press freedom organisation urges the president who is elected in the 4 November run-off to immediately take...

The arrest of two Agence France-Presse reporters on September 12th is the latest in a string of cases of foreign journalists being obstructed in their work. They show that the less stringent regulations introduced in January are being applied erratically and only when less sensitive issues are involved. At least 32 foreign journalists have been detained or prevented by police from doing reports...

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- -- Colombian authorities on Thursday arrested two local politicians in connection with the April 2003 killing of Jose Emeterio Rivas, a radio reporter who had denounced links between local government and paramilitary groups. The arrests in the northern city of Barrancabermeja were welcomed by rights groups that have long complained of official impunity in Colombia. Last March...

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 11 September 2007, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ivorian police summoned five journalists of two pro-opposition daily newspapers for allegedly publishing stories they claimed cast a slur on the reputation of President Laurent Gbagbo. Two of the journalists, Coulibaly Seydou and Alexis Noume, are editors of "Le Jour Plus". The other three, Assouan N' Gueeta...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today condemned the recent interrogations, threats and harassment of journalists reporting on government spending in Côte d'Ivoire. Three journalists have been interrogated for the last three days by criminal police and threatened with death by a Member of Parliament, in relation to articles said to be defamatory towards the President...

The head of a burgeoning Afghan media empire looked down at his new BlackBerry, vibrating against a table in Washington earlier this week. "Afghan civilians injured in Gereshk suicide bombing," read the e-mail headline. Another day, another suicide bombing in another town. Another too-typical news event for Saad Mohseni's stations to broadcast across a country where prime-time programming is...

A Cairo court has sentenced four independent editors to one-year jail terms for publishing “false information.” Editors Ibrahim Eissa of the daily Al-Dustour, Wael al-Abrashy of the weekly Sawt al-Umm, Adel Hammouda of the weekly Al-Fajr, and Abdel Halim Kandil, former editor of the weekly Al-Karama were convicted Thursday of “publishing false information likely to disturb public order” in a case...

NEW YORK (AFP) - Born 10 years ago, the Google Internet search engine has grown into the electronic center of human knowledge by indexing billions of web pages as well as images, books and videos. On September 15, 1997 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two 24 year-old Stanford University students, registered the domain name of "google.com." The word is a variation of 'googol,' which refers to the number...

A Cairo court has sentenced four independent editors to one-year jail terms for publishing “false information.” Editors Ibrahim Eissa of the daily Al-Dustour, Wael al-Abrashy of the weekly Sawt al-Umm, Adel Hammouda of the weekly Al-Fajr, and Abdel Halim Kandil, former editor of the weekly Al-Karama were convicted Thursday of “publishing false information likely to disturb public order” in a case...

(HRinfo/IFEX) - HRINFO has expressed deep concern over a new sentence passed by the Ras Kheima court against writer Khalid El-Asly, of the Majan website ( http://www.majan.net ), and the site's head administrator Muhammed Shouhi. Both were sentenced to five months in prison. This is the second case launched against the website. A further two complaints have been filed but thus far have not been...