News

Pham Xuan An, 79, the Viet Cong colonel who worked as a reporter for U.S. news organizations during the Vietnam War while also spying for the communists, died of emphysema Sept. 20 in a military hospital in the former Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. The secret of Mr. Pham's double life was kept for almost 30 years, from 1959 until the 1980s. He was the first Vietnamese to be a full-time...

PRAGUE, September 21, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- A Swedish journalist specialized in Central Asian affairs says an independent Uzbek reporter who has gone missing, Jamshid Karimov, recently wrote her to say he feared he might be arrested. Speaking to RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, Elin Jonsson said she heard similar concerns from another independent Uzbek journalist who was detained a few days after. Jamshid...

New York, September 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the prosecution for criminal insult of a Russian journalist who satirized President Vladimir Putin’s campaign to boost the birth rate. Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor-in-chief of the independent news Web site Kursiv, went on trial today in the city of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow, charged with insulting the...

New York, September 21, 2006—As Thailand’s new ruling military junta imposed restrictions on the media, the Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the transitional authority to uphold the press freedom guarantees enshrined in the recently dissolved 1997 constitution. The ruling Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM) called a meeting today with senior media...

JOURNALISM courses run by the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of Western Sydney and the private Brisbane college Jschool have been judged the best by their students. All the graduates of those courses who returned questionnaires in the annual Graduate Careers Council of Australia survey said they were very satisfied or satisfied. Rounding out the top five were Perth's Murdoch...

LONDON, Sep 21 (IPS) - The appearance of an English language service from Al Jazeera television will mark more than expansion of a company; it will come as one of the biggest challenges yet to the dominance of Western news providers, academics say. "The forthcoming launch of Al Jazeera International, the English language edition of the pan-Arabic news network, is likely to influence the way...

Few were surprised by last Monday's ban on Iran's leading reformist newspaper, Shargh (East), which has, for some time, boldly voiced dissatisfaction with the outcome of last year's elections that brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. The newspaper ran a cartoon the previous Thursday depicting a donkey -- a symbol of ignorance in Iranian culture -- with a halo around its head, braying at...

Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd has for the first time been linked to an elaborate sting operation targeting a CNET News.com reporter that lies at the heart of the company's attempts to determine the source of a boardroom leak. The Washington Post reported on its Web site late Wednesday night that an internal e-mail sent by HP Chairman Patricia Dunn indicated that Hurd approved of an e-mail ruse...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, September 20, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the arrest and detention of a reporter in Tikrit today. Kalshan al-Bayati, 33, an Iraqi correspondent for the London-based, Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, was arrested by Iraqi forces around noon when she went to collect her previously confiscated personal computer from local authorities...

WASHINGTON: Applications from 15 Iranian journalists for visas to attend U.N. sessions were withdrawn by the Iranian government and not turned down by the United States as alleged in Tehran, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday. The applications were received Friday and would have been difficult to process in time for the opening Monday of the special session of the U.N. General Assembly...