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The Burmese military dictatorship may be tightening the already restricted telecommunication channels in the country to prevent information about the ongoing mass protests and arrests in Rangoon from leaking out. Members of the Burmese National League for Democracy shout slogans during a protest in front of the Burmese embassy in Seoul August 8, 2007. The protest was held in conjunction with the...

CASABLANCA (Reuters) - A Moroccan journalist who could be jailed for up to five years for showing disrespect for King Mohammed began his trial on Friday saying he had done no wrong. Current affairs magazine editor Ahmed Reda Benchemsi questioned the usefulness of elections next month in a country where the monarchy wields ultimate power. Only a few days earlier, the king used his annual address to...

Members of the Hamas Security Force beat up journalists covering a demonstration Friday held by the rival Fatah movement, briefly arresting four of them and confiscating their cameras in a sign of growing intolerance for political opposition, Arabnews.com has reported. The Hamas men fired guns over the heads of the protesters and scuffled with Fatah members, who threw stones and bottles at a...

MANILA, Philippines -- A lifestyle writer has been hounded out of her job by death threats and hate mail after she wrote a travel piece many readers found insulting to millions of Filipinos who work abroad. Malu Fernandez told Agence France-Presse she quit her job as a columnist at the Manila Standard Today newspaper and People Asia magazine after her article "From Boracay to Greece!" provoked...

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has quashed a complaint and a summoning order passed thereon by a court here against The Hindu, its editor and the publisher to face trial in a defamation case following a complaint over publication o f a report relating to a matrimonial dispute in 1994, holding that “material averments attracting the defamation charge under Section 499 (defamation) of the Indian...

A Somali radio journalist was gunned down Friday — the seventh journalist to be killed in a crisis where reporters have become prime targets in spreading violence. Somali police display an arms cache in Mogadishu, 20 August 2007. Eight people were killed in overnight clashes here between rebels and Somali government forces, police said Friday, as a Somali radio journalist was shot dead in the...

Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas and Burmese investigative reporter May Thingyan Hein have been named the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award winners by the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ). They will be honoured along with Founders Award recipient Tom Brokaw at the 10th annual ICFJ Awards Dinner at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Centre in Washington DC on November...

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 21 August 2007, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Fred Carew, discontinued criminal proceedings against Philip Neville, editor of the "Standard Times", a privately-owned Freetown-based daily newspaper. A MFWA correspondent reported that President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah ordered the trial to be discontinued after the newspaper had fulfilled a number of conditions laid down by...

The International Federation of Journalists and its regional group the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) today welcomed a court victory that gives new hope to thousands of freelance journalists who support union action and collective bargaining to defend their working conditions. The Danish Labour Court has ruled that a union blockade of the magazine publisher Aller A/S because of its...

Former government member Janusz Kaczmarek, who was fired as interior minister earlier this month, reportedly told a behind-closed-doors meeting of the parliamentary commission for the secret services on 22 August that the phones of journalists critical of the government were tapped on the orders of justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. “It is unacceptable that a...