News

LONDON (Reuters) - The BBC is to launch a range of web-based on-demand TV and audio services which could revolutionise the way people watch television. The BBC Trust, which oversees the corporation, said on Monday it had approved the service after examining the public demand and any impact it would have on commercial rivals. Broadcaster Channel 4 said on Monday that its on-demand service had been...

BAGHDAD — One of Iraq's most beloved broadcasters was wounded in an assassination attempt Sunday, the latest target in a string of attacks against journalists here. Amal Mudarris, 58, a Baghdad radio veteran who began her career in 1962, suffered serious head injuries when she was shot several times outside her Baghdad home Sunday morning. Doctors said later in the day that her condition had...

AMMAN, Jordan: Jordanian authorities confiscated an edition of a local newspaper after it tried to print a front page article containing material authorities claimed harmed relations with the Palestinian government, its chief editor said Monday. Fahd Al-Rimawi, editor of Al-Majd, told the Associated Press that the April 30 edition of the semimonthly newspaper was confiscated during its printing...

MEXICO CITY - Mexican journalists have grown impatient as more of their colleagues are murdered, kidnapped or threatened because of their work. Increasingly, the media have directed their frustration toward the office designed to provide them justice: the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Journalists. Created amid fanfare in 2006 by then-President Vicente Fox, the office is now seen by many...

A Sunday newspaper's decision not to print a lengthy piece of religious writing as an advertisement has been backed by the Court of Appeal. The court threw out an attempt to sue the Sunday Star-Times for $5m. David Edward Coxhead and his House of David Healing Centre Trust had tried to sue the paper's publisher Fairfax New Zealand after it declined to print the full-page advertisement. The Court...

Online publishers are strapping on their Birkenstocks. Buoyed by the breakaway success of An Inconvenient Truth, the film documentary of Al Gore’s environmental lecture, publishers like The Washington Post, National Geographic and others are increasing their offerings of ‘green’ content, hoping to attract readers and advertising revenues from manufacturers and retailers who are suddenly walking...

Reporters Without Borders condemned yesterday’s murder of young reporter employed by the daily Uthayan, one of the Tamil newspapers that has been most targeted by violence. Gunned down on his bicycle near the newspaper’s office in the northern city of Jaffna, Selvarajah Rajivarnam was the second journalist to be killed in a government-controlled area in the past 10 days. "The people who murder...

CHENNAI: A Fast Track Court (FTC) at Gobichettipalayam on Thursday acquitted R.R. Gopal, Editor of Tamil biweekly Nakheeran, and 10 others in a murder case. FTC-II Judge Prem Kumar in his order said there was no evidence to find any of the 11 accused guilty of any offence alleged by the prosecution. The matter relates to the suspected murder of a police informant, Kandavelu. Initially, the police...

The orthopaedic surgeon Wynne Lieberthal accused The Star of destroying his and his family's life after its journalists doggedly pursued complaints of malpractice against him. He was eventually struck off the medical practitioner's register and, according to the Health Professions Council of South Africa, lost all his assets as a direct result of the negative (but probably fair) publicity. "When...

Andrew Keen finds himself in the eye of a storm. The Briton, who made his living from the hi-tech boom in California's Silicon Valley, has dared to challenge the assumptions behind the internet revolution which began there and swept the world. America's massed army of bloggers do not like it one bit. Far from his birthplace in Golders Green, north London, Keen is now being labelled the nemesis of...