News

(CEMESP/IFEX) - Information Minister Dr. Laurence Bropleh announced the lifting of the ban when he addressed journalists on 30 May 2007. The government, on 27 February, revoked the operational permit of the "Independent" after it published a photograph showing President Ellen Sirleaf's then chief of office staff Willis Knuckles engaging in group sex with two ladies. Announcing the lifting of the...

Reporters Without Borders voiced deep sadness today at the death of Noor Hakim, a reporter for the Urdu-language daily Pakistan and vice-president of the Tribal Union of Journalists, in a bombing in Bajaur, in the northwestern Tribal Areas, on 2 June. Four other people were killed by the bomb. "We address our condolences to his wife, son and three daughters and his colleagues in the Union of...

BEIJING (Reuters) - An advertisement saluting mothers of students and workers killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown appeared in a newspaper in southwest China on Monday, two witnesses said, in a rare public criticism of the massacre. The advertisement, in the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News, read: "Paying tribute to the strong mothers of June 4 victims", two local...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hustler magazine is looking for some scandalous sex in Washington again -- and willing to pay for it. "Have you had a sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official?" read a full-page advertisement taken out by Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine in Sunday's Washington Post. It offered $1 million for documented...

New York, June 4, 2007—A Nanjing-based reporter whose online video, audio, and written news reports had angered authorities is in police custody today along with his wife, according to his employer at the U.S.-based news Web site Boxun News. Following the May 30 arrest, police accused Sun Lin (known by his pen name Jie Mu) of illegally possessing weapons and heading a criminal gang. "We are...

Newspaper circulations worldwide rose 2.3 per cent in 2006 while newspaper advertising revenues showed substantial gains, the World Association of Newspapers announced Monday. WAN said global newspaper sales were up 2.3 per cent over the year, and had increased 9.48 per cent over the past five years. Newspaper sales increased year-on-year in Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, with North America...

A Chinese journalist serving a 10-year prison sentence for revealing his government’s orders to newspapers to censor their reporting of the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary, has been awarded the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize from the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The award to Shi Tao, who was imprisoned after the American search engine company Yahoo...

(RSF/IFEX) - Madrid investigating judge Santiago Pedraz announced on 24 May 2007 that he has rejected an appeal by the prosecutor’s office against his decision to indict three US soldiers for the murder of Spanish cameraman José Couso, who was killed when a US tank shelled the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003. Prosecutor Jesús Alonso had appealed against the indictment on the grounds...

(IAPA/IFEX) - MIAMI, Florida (June 4, 2007) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) said today that it will keep a close watch on the legal battle between private and state shareholders of the Ecuadorean newspaper El Telégrafo in the hope that the dispute will be conducted transparently and according to due process. Carlos Navarette Castillo, the paper's editor since 2002 and a descendant of...

(HRinfo/IFEX) - The Tunisian government must respect the rule of law and terminate the house arrest imposed on the journalist and prisoner of opinion Abdallah Al-Zawary for five years, said the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo). Al-Zawary has been under house arrest since June 2002. After spending 11 years in prison, Al-Zawary had been released in June 2002. Immediately upon his...