News

HYDERABAD — The Andhra police have stepped up their efforts to resolve the mystery of the grisly murder of Lakshmi Sujata, a news reader at a local Television channel in a Vijaywada lodge. They have arrested three people including the brother-in-law of the victim. A police team from Vijaywada also arrested two persons from Hyderabad, the police sources said. In Vijaywada, where Sujata Lakshmi...

(AAI/IFEX) - On 27 January 2007, the Jordanian minister of foreign affairs, Abul Elah Alkhateeb, brought a lawsuit against "Al Hilal" weekly newspaper for defamation and insult after it published news that contained criticism of the minister's performance. The lawsuit was brought by the minister against journalist Ahmed Salama and editor-in-chief Naser Kamsh of "Al Hilal" newspaper, whom he...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced concern about a physical attack on Jean-Bosco Gasasira, the managing editor of the independent fortnightly "Umuvugizi", who was beaten unconscious on 9 February 2007 in Kigali. It followed months of verbal hostility from the Rwandan government towards the more outspoken, privately-owned media. "When we condemned the threats being made against...

(MISA/IFEX) - On 13 February 2007, MISA confirmed that several journalists in Lesotho are being inundated with anonymous threatening calls, and accusations that they are at the forefront of a campaign to cause confusion in the country and within the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). The targeted journalists, Thabo Thakalekoala and Adam Lekhoada of Harvest FM radio station, Molika of...

BOGOTA, Feb 14 (Reuters) - A Colombian journalist who went missing after he was accused by the government of taking part in guerrilla attacks said on Wednesday he was being framed, according to a statement on his network's Web site. Freddy Munoz, a correspondent for the Venezuelan-financed Telesur news station, was arrested in November on charges that he helped Marxist rebels bomb utility towers...

The verdict which the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issues in the case of SonntagsZeitung journalist Martin Stoll v. the Swiss federal government could lead to a reform of the Swiss criminal code and could have a major impact on the practice of journalism in Switzerland, Reporters Without Borders said today. The 17-member Grand Chamber began considering the case on 7...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the Japanese government to refrain from editorial interference, after last month's ruling from Tokyo's High Court that Japan's public broadcaster, Nihon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), bowed to political pressure and censored a 2001 program regarding Japan's wartime sex slavery. According to online newspaper reports, politicians...

Manama: Bahrain Journalists Syndicate yesterday warned against the increasingly exclusionist tendencies being adopted by private citizens and official institutions. "We have noted with alarm the latest developments and procedures connected with journalists, and we fear that they are meant to curb their freedom of expression," the syndicate, yet to be officially recognised, said in a statement....

In two more days of testimony on 9 and 12 February 2007 to a coroner's court in Glebe, Sydney, witnesses provided more details about the circumstances in which cameraman Brian Peters and four other journalist working for Australian TV stations died in the East Timor border village of Balibo on 16 October 1975. A former fighter with the Fretilin guerrillas, who was 16 at the time, confirmed on 9...

The Belgian court copyright infringement ruling against Google News will not ultimately damage the search engine service, but it will bring the company to the negotiating table with publishers who are concerned about how their content is being used online. Losing Copiepresse's content will not in itself cause Google News too many problems. Many publishers see the Google News service as a fantastic...