News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More U.S. teachers are using national and international online news sites in the classroom, leaving behind newspapers that fail to grasp the Internet's importance in trying to reach students, a study found. Fifty-seven percent of teachers use Internet-based news in the classroom with some frequency, said the study, which was based on a survey of 1,262 teachers in grades 5...

(CEHURDES/IFEX) - CEHURDES condemns the targeted attack by a section of protesters staging demonstrations in the eastern region of Terai in Nepal during the latter half of January 2007 (see IFEX alert of 26 and 22 January 2007). On 28 January, protesters in Birgunj city targeted media houses and reporters. According to the "Kantipur" daily newspaper, the protesters even went around the city...

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has called on the federal and local authorities to make up for lost time in the investigation into the 20 January 2007 disappearance of journalist Rodolfo Rincón Taracena, of the regional daily "Tabasco Hoy". The journalist had just written two by-lined articles, one on drug trafficking and the other about bank hold-ups, when he went missing in Villahermosa in the south-east of...

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has condemned harassment of the local press in Mexico after publications were censored and journalists spied on in the second half of January 2007 in Sonora state in the north-west, Guanajuato, in central Mexico, and Puebla in the south. RSF noted that the abuse of power was the work of local authorities already operating hand-in-glove with the justice system over press cases....

(AMARC/IFEX) - Between the night of 24 January and the morning of 25 January 2007, a confrontation erupted between militants of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Institucional Revolucionario, PRI) and members of the grassroots community council of San Antonino de Velasco, in the state Oaxaca. During the incident, Emilio Santiago and Darío Campos, both of whom are journalists from...

New York, January 29, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ongoing harassment of a popular newspaper in western Kazakhstan which exposed local government corruption. The independent bi-weekly Uralskaya Nedelya has been subjected to retaliation from government officials since it began a series on corruption last July, Editor-in-Chief Tamara Yeslyamova told CPJ. Three printing...

Reporters Without Borders today called on the authorities to withdraw their prosecution against journalist Claude Dassé of the privately-owned Soir Info daily, who was held for five days at Abidjan investigative police headquarters on a contempt of court charge concerning the state prosecutor. “Blatant abuse of authority is not the way to regulate the media in a democracy,” the press freedom...

Sweden's Post och Inrikes Tidningar, regarded as the world's oldest newspaper though it had actually become a government bulletin, has suspended publication to become available only on the Internet. Founded in 1645 by Queen Christina, the Post och Inrikes Tidningar (PoIT), or Post and Domestic Newspapers, was a staple for Swedish readers throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries. But its...

Part of the news media’s job is to make information from people in high places more accessible to the masses. Now one newspaper has decided to restrict access to its own content, and it hopes to make some money by doing so. The Sacramento Bee, which is owned by the McClatchy Company, announced on Wednesday that it was introducing a new Web site focused on California government and state politics...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) is concerned that police in Malaysia roughed up and arrested a blogger at a peaceful assembly, and briefly detained an online journalist covering the event on 21 January 2007. Blogger Tan Han Kuo had attempted to document the peaceful assembly held to protest a recent increase in highway toll charges, said a 26 January release from the...