News

PARIS (Reuters) - Journalists on Les Echos said on Wednesday they had suspended a strike to protest at the possible sale of the French business newspaper after further talks with its owner, Pearson (PSON.L: Quote, Profile, Research). In a statement, the journalists said they remained unhappy with proposals Pearson had made to guarantee editorial independence in case of a sale and were ready to...

KHARTOUM (AFP) - Sudan released four journalists on Wednesday after detaining them for a week for trying to cover protests against a dam that provoked clashes with police and the deaths of four demonstrators. "We were freed this morning and we've been told that there will be no charges filed against us," one of the four, Al-Fateh Abdallah from Al-Sudani newspaper, told AFP. He added that neither...

LONDON (AP) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is reportedly considering a swap of social networking website MySpace for a 25 per cent stake in Yahoo. The Times of London, which is owned by News Corp., says its parent company was looking for exposure in a larger Internet-based business such as Yahoo. News Corp. spent $580 million to buy MySpace in 2005. Officials for News Corp. and Yahoo were not...

KARACHI, Pakistan–In the city that swallowed up Daniel Pearl, a sense of menace still hangs as heavy as the sultry air. A high-profile new film has focused renewed attention on the case of The Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and executed by Islamic insurgents here in 2002, and has underscored the fact that many questions remain unanswered. Investigators in this teeming port city, a...

(CEPET/IFEX) - Mexico, 18 June 2007 - Columnist Francisco Rodríguez announced today that he has received two death threats in the last two weeks from the same public employee. The source of the threats, according to a column Rodríguez published on 18 June 2007, is Lino Arturo Vera Pérez, an employee of the National Statistics Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INEGI). Vera Pérez is the...

(MFWA/IFEX) - The Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja, Nigeria has issued a hearing notice for a suit filed against the Republic of Gambia by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) on behalf of a "disappeared" Gambian journalist, Chief Ebrima Manneh, reporter of pro-government Banjul-based "Daily Observer" newspaper. This follows an...

The Mercury News will reduce its newsroom staff by 40 positions through layoffs that will take place in July, the company announced Tuesday. The reduction - a nearly 17 percent cut - will leave the paper with 200 newsroom positions, down from a peak seven years ago of about 400. The cuts are in response to declining advertising revenues, said Executive Editor Carole Leigh Hutton. "Revenue is not...

Nepal’s Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has pledged to preserve monarchy in the country if the present king Gyanendra and Prince Paras voluntarily quit their throne. Speaking Sunday to Pakistani journalists in kathmandu, Koirala expressed his inner desire to protect monarchy even if the coming Constituent Assembly decides not to keep it. When his remarks were highlighted by national media in...

KHAIRPUR: Reporters without Borders on Tuesday voiced revulsion at the murder of Noor Ahmed Solangi, correspondent for the Sindhi-language newspaper, Khabroon, in Kingri. Ahmed Solangi, 34, died in a hail of nine bullets after he was ambushed by six people on motorbikes and armed with Kalashnikovs, who shot him at point blank range as he was distributing newspapers on 17 June. "We are shocked by...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is appalled by news that only weeks after the Nepal 1 TV strike for better working conditions was resolved, eight Delhi-based employees have been forced to resign due to threats and pressure from television management. According to the statement issued by the television's employees union on June 12, journalists Chranjivi Devkota, Rajendra Khanal...