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Brian Tierney, a onetime critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer who wound up buying the paper, is determined to take his new property in a different direction. "We don't need a Jerusalem bureau," he says. "What we need are more people in the South Jersey bureau." But six months after this advertising and public relations executive gained control of a once-proud newspaper that routinely ranked among...

THE private-equity group Apax is planning a bid for PR Newswire (PRN), the highly profitable press-release distribution business that constitutes one of the biggest parts of United Business Media (UBM). The London-based private- equity house is thought to have spent recent weeks plotting an approach for the business, which could be worth £500m. UBM has consistently said there are no synergies...

The Chhattisgarh government said Saturday that it would probe the alleged assault of a journalist by civil militia personnel and punish the guilty. The assurance came after the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemned the Nov 15 attack on Afzal Khan, a journalist, by Salwa Judum cadres - part of the civil militia movement funded by the state. Khan is a correspondent...

On a November day in 2005, headmaster Tarkeshwar Singh was teaching in a school in Cherpal village near Bijapur in Chhattisgarh. A few Salva Judum leaders, accompanied by police, entered the classroom and told him that he was being arrested. He was taken to the Bijapur police station and told that his crime was to have Naxalite literature and red uniforms at his home, besides firing a gun in a...

Kamal al-Olufi, editor of the Al-Rai Al-A’am weekly, was imprisoned today, after Judge Hassan al-Akwa’a sentenced him to a year behind bars for insulting Islam and abusing the prophet. The judge also ordered that the newspaper be shut down for six months, and that al-Olufi be banned from writing for the same period, upon completion of his prison sentence. Moreover, al-Olufi was also sentenced to...

Tehran (AsiaNews) -- The fatwa pronounced against Salman Rushdie is not the only example of how Iran's Shia clergy claims the right to exert extra-territorial jurisdiction. A few days ago an Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Morteza Bani Fazl, said that Rafik Taghi, a journalist in Azerbaijan, should be killed and as an encouragement he has offered a house he has inherited from his father as a reward. Mr...

A journalist who received death threats from a pro-government militia is in danger in the central-east Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Afzal Khan, correspondent in Bhopalpatnam for the daily Hind Sat based in Jagdalpur, central India, was badly beaten and received explicit threats he would be killed. "The fight against Maoist groups has been getting out of hand,” Reporters Without Borders said. â...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the attacks on Hindsat journalist, Afzal Khan, in Bhopalpatnam, Chhattisgarh on November 15 by the anti-Maoist group, Salwa Judum, including public humiliation, threats against the journalist and his family, and physical assault. On November 15, at a public meeting in a high school in Bhopalpatnam, the leaders of Salwa Judum over the...

WASHINGTON — It has been a week since Al Jazeera English went on the air and Dave Marash, the news channel’s Washington-based anchor, is feeling like the “belle of the ball.” Everyone he meets is curious about his new job and everyone wants to hear what it is like to work for an outfit that has revolutionized television news and that is shunned by many Americans as a mouthpiece for anti-US...

A reporter for a weekly investigative crime magazine was knocked off his motorcycle and run over on Tuesday by unidentified assailants who then shot him at point-blank range with a 9mm handgun, state authorities said. Roberto Marcos Garcia, 50, chief reporter for the weekly Testimonio magazine in Veracruz, was shot four times in the head and other parts of his body along a highway 8km northeast of...