News

LONDON, May 15 — The trustees charged with overseeing the integrity and independence of the Reuters Group endorsed the sale of the company to the Thomson Corporation of Canada on Tuesday, but the speed with which they acquiesced has upset some employees, who fear that the merger could undermine the quality of Reuters’s journalism. Many financial analysts and investors have reacted favorably to...

(FMM/IFEX) - The FMM is perturbed to learn that the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Sri Lanka Police questioned the Editor of The Morning Leader, Sonali Samarasinghe, for over four hours today based on a complaint ostensibly under Sri Lankan Monetary Law made by the Central Bank in relation to a series of investigative articles published in the Sunday Leader and Irudina newspapers...

ISLAMABAD: Legal and political wrangling over the suspension of the chief justice of Pakistan by President Pervez Musharraf appears to be leading to new pressures on the media, news organizations and media watchdog groups say. Media organizations and rights groups say that the government is becoming increasingly intolerant of the independent media's coverage of the judicial crisis that began in...

The Supreme Court of Russia has upheld termination of Paul Klebnikov’s case due to the disappearance of suspect - Kazbek Dukuzov, who is on the wanted list now. Forbes Russia Editor-in-Chief Paul Klebnikov was shot to death in Moscow on July 9, 2004. The Supreme Court also sustained the absentee arrest of Dukuzov despite the appeal of his lawyer, RIA Novosti reported. Alexander Chernov, who stands...

The world may be flat, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has written, but I always liked to think I was standing on a hill. Now comes the news that pasadenanow.com, a local news site, is recruiting reporters in India. The website’s editor points out that he can get two Indian reporters for a mere $20,800 a year — and no, they won’t be commuting from New Delhi. Since Pasadena’s city...

Two pominent reformist newspapers in Iran that had been banned resumed publishing this week. One of the papers, Hammihan (Compatriot), was banned in 2000 by the hardline judiciary after it called for improved ties with the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reported. On Sunday, the paper was back on the newsstands, and its top story — with the headline "Iran-US talks in Baghdad" — was on an...

Journalists in France have been urged by a press freedom organisaiton to stay on guard after the weekly Journal du Dimanche decided not to run a story reporting that Cécilia Sarkozy, the wife of new President Nicolas Sarkozy, did not vote in the second-round of the presidential election. Cecilia Sarkozy (third from left), wife of France's new President Nicolas Sarkozy, arrives with her son Louis...

(IAPA/IFEX) - The following is a 15 May 2007 IAPA press release: IAPA calls for investigation into disappearance of two Mexican journalists MIAMI, Florida (May 15, 2007) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed concern at the disappearance of two journalists in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and called on authorities to take urgent action to put an end to the violence being unleashed...

Madurai, May 15 (IANS) The Tamil Nadu police Tuesday took into custody a strongman of the M.K. Azhagiri camp, known as Attack Pandi, the main accused in the attack on the office of the Dinakaran newspaper in Madurai in which three people were killed. Attack Pandi is the main accused named in the police complaint. He had surrendered before the Madurai rural police Tuesday and was produced before a...

Kate Webb, a brave, no-nonsense correspondent during the Vietnam War who was erroneously reported to have been captured, killed and cremated in Cambodia — only to emerge from the jungle alive —died on Sunday in Sydney, Australia. She was 64. The cause was bowel cancer, her brother, Jeremy Webb, told The Associated Press. Ms. Webb lived on the Hunter River, north of Sydney. On April 7, 1971, when...