News

Chew on these numbers. According to a study conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and online market research company Pinstrom, there are 40,000 advertisers targeting Indian web users, who conduct over one billion searches a month. Out of this, over 300 million searches carry ads, eventually producing 5 million click-thrus every month. In such a melee, how does a...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of journalists jailed worldwide for their work rose for the second year with Internet bloggers and online reporters now one third of those incarcerated, a U.S.-based media watchdog said on Thursday. A Committee to Protect Journalists census found that a record 134 journalists were in jail on December 1 -- an increase of nine from the 2005 tally -- in 24 countries...

In recent months, a flow of legal letters and orders has hit newspapers’ legal offices from actors, models and footballing personalities. That looks set to grow after this week’s ruling by Mr Justice Eady granting a temporary injunction to a high-profile sports figure who had an affair with another man’s wife banning the betrayed husband from naming him in the media. In what is thought to be the...

New York, December 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged at the detention of one Cuban journalist for working for an independent news agency, and of a second for attempting to launch such an agency. Police and state security forces swooped on the Havana home of independent journalist Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia on Monday, confiscating a computer, tape-recorders, a fax machine and...

New York, December 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the conviction and fine handed down to a Yemeni editor today for reprinting Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. A court in the capital Sana’a convicted Mohammed al-Asaadi, editor-in-chief of the English-language weekly Yemen Observer, of insulting Islam and fined him 500,000 rials (U.S. $2,500). “We’re relieved that...

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF is alarmed by the news that José Antonio García Apac, the editor of the weekly "Ecos de la Cuenca" in Tepalcatepec, in the southwestern state of Michoacán, has been missing since 20 November 2006. The press freedom organisation fears the worst given that Adolfo Sánchez Guzmán of radio Xhora Ori Stereo 99.3 was found shot dead on 30 November in the eastern state of Veracruz, two...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has hailed a foreign ministry decision, taken under international pressure, to loosen regulations for foreign journalists working in China. From the beginning of January 2007 until October 2008, foreign journalists with accreditation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games will be able to travel freely throughout China, including Tibet and Xinjiang. "The...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has slammed moves by the Fijian military to crackdown on the media in the final stages of the military coup in Fiji, which stripped Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase of his powers and removed him from the capital. IFJ sources at Fiji TV and the Fiji Times confirmed that military personnel moved into the newsrooms of media outlets late...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced alarm that Malaysia could introduce repressive legislation on the Internet after the science and technology minister, Kong Cho Ha, said the government planned new rules to block its malicious use and prevent bloggers from posting news jeopardising social harmony. "The government of Abdullah Badawi seems to want to impose on the Internet the same...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has called for the immediate and unconditional release of Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia of the Jóvenes sin Censura independent news agency, who was arrested by the State Security police on 4 December 2006 in Havana. The organisation also condemned the four-year prison sentence passed on independent journalist Raymundo Perdigón Brito on 5 December for being a "pre...