News

CARACAS, Venezuela: A Venezuelan journalist said his car mysteriously burst into flames after repeated threats led him to resign as editor of a Web site critical of President Hugo Chavez. Roger Santodomingo told reporters that his car was parked on a street in Caracas early Wednesday when he heard a small blast and found the vehicle burning. "We heard the ruckus outside and the explosion,"...

ISLAMABAD, July 4: Journalists on Wednesday held a demonstration in front of the Press Information Department (PID) to protest the government’s inability to provide protection to mediapersons during the coverage of the Lal Masjid stand-off in which two journalists have been killed and another critically injured. The journalists started the protests after observing Fateha Khwani for the souls of...

New York, July 3, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the criminal prosecution and unreasonable bail conditions facing Sierra Leonean journalist Philip Neville, the editor of The Standard Times who is being held at the Central Prison in Freetown on libel charges. Defense lawyer J.B. Jenkins Johnston told CPJ that a Freetown court set bail on Monday at 200 million leones (US$68,135)...

Hamas gunmen have reportedly surrounded the stronghold of the group holding BBC journalist Alan Johnston. According to a report by the Associated Press, members of the movement's militia have moved on to rooftops and taken up positions in the streets in the Gaza neighbourhood that is home to his captors, the Army of Islam. Johnston has been held hostage by the Army of Islam, which is led by Gaza's...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the murders of two Baghdad TV journalists after being kidnapped in separate incidents in the past month. Owned by the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party, Baghdad TV was the target of an armed attack just three months ago that killed two of its employees. “We are again deeply shocked by the news of these repeated attacks on the news media,” the press freedom...

New Delhi, July 3: Delhi High Court today set aside a lower court order convicting an Urdu newspaper jounalist on the ground that he had promoted feeling of hatred and dissatisfaction against the Government through his article 24 years ago. Justice Shiv Narayan Dhingra ruled that the lower court had erred in concluding from the article that it was against the goverment. The judge said ''I consider...

JEDDAH, 3 July 2007 — The Ministry of Culture and Information has banned government departments and agencies from publishing advertisements in newspapers in reply to any reports in the local press. The ban is applied on all government departments without exception. Aidha Al-Zahrani, acting assistant deputy minister for internal information at the ministry, said newspapers and journalists would...

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the World Editors Forum (WEF) have called on African leaders, who are meeting in Ghana at the African Union Summit, to abolish "insult" laws and to accept the principles of press freedom set out in the Declaration of Table Mountain, which calls for the abolishment of all laws that restrict freedom of expression. The International Federation of...

(IPYS/IFEX) - Instituto Prensa y Sociedad deplores the support of President Alan García to the censorship of an exhibition of journalistic illustrations by painter Piero Quijano, sponsored initially by the National Institute for Culture (INC). This display of support, inappropriate from someone in his position, aggravates an overbearing act committed by the INC that we have already criticized, and...

Iran has launched an English-language satellite television channel to redress the balance of world news coverage which was now in the grip of the West. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at the launch function Monday that the 24-hour channel had a duty "to reveal (what goes on) behind the scenes of the propaganda news networks of mankind's enemies." He said the state-owned channel should stand...