News

CARACAS: Arturo Sarmiento speaks English polished at Sandhurst, the British military school. He made fortunes trading oil and importing whiskey. Now Sarmiento, just 35 and a staunch supporter of President Hugo Chávez, owns an expanding television network here. As tempers flare around Chávez's decision not to renew the license of RCTV, the country's oldest broadcaster and a vocal critic...

THE COST OF getting magazines into your mailbox will shoot up July 15. How much? It depends. Magazine publishers are facing a radical postage rate restructuring that favors those with large circulations and transfers costs to small- and mid-circulation publications. Past increases to periodical postage were applied fairly equally across all publications. But this time, things are drastically...

(ANEM/IFEX) - BELGRADE, May 28, 2007 - The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) strongly condemns the continuous pressure on and attacks against media that report on war crimes in former Yugoslavia. ANEM also condemns the glorification of those indicted in war crimes processes and the denial of these crimes. On 26 May 2007, several hundred members of the Serbian Radical Party and the...

TEHRAN -- Iran Monday lifted a ban on Al Jazeera imposed after the pan-Arab satellite television network aired a program deemed insulting to the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq. "Following the relevant authorities' apology ... Al Jazeera's Arabic and English services can resume work in Iran," Iran's head of foreign media, Mohsen Moqaddaszadeh, said in a statement carried by the official IRNA...

(CJFE/IFEX) - (Toronto, May 28, 2007) Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) believes that the independence of journalists is at stake as Derek Finkle's fight to quash a subpoena against him goes back to court on May 29. CJFE has joined with the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) and the Writers' Union of Canada as interveners in the case. The subpoena was issued in 2006 to...

LONDON (Reuters) - A Palestinian official said on Sunday missing BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston was alive and well and he hoped he would be released soon. Johnston, 44, disappeared on March 12 while driving in Gaza. Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Palestinian cabinet, told Sky News he could confirm Johnston was alive and being held captive. The Palestinian government had made great efforts to...

CARACAS, Venezuela -- In the 1990s, Venezuelan journalist José Vicente Rangel hosted a television talk show whose aggressive style and muckraking led to the downfall of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Now, after eight years as President Hugo Chávez's deputy, Rangel is back on television, interviewing and breaking news on "José Vicente Today." But instead of airing the bare-knuckles journalism for...

Kanhangad (Kerala), May. 25 (PTI): An 'attempt to murder' case was today lodged against the Managing Editor of the evening daily, even as the editor said he was being falsely implicated in the case after the daily's office was attacked by unidentified persons late last night. According to the Hosdurg police, a case of attempt to murder was filed against Aravindan Manikoth, Managing Editor of...

NEW DELHI: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a defamation complaint against Aroon Purie, Editor-in-Chief of India Today, Prabhu Chawla, Editor, and Mohini Bhullar, Publishing Director, for publishing a news item on `Gandhiji's assassination' referring to Nathuram Godse as an RSS worker. Acting on the complaint filed by Mukesh Garg, the trial court by an order dated October 13, 2004...

Reporters Without Borders today strongly condemned the British parliament’s approval of amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, including one that would bar access to details of MPs’ expenses. “If these measures become law, it would be a setback,” the press freedom organisation said. “Access to information is a basic principle of democracy and for MPs to hide details of their spending is a...