News

NEW YORK: In today's Iraq, intellectuals are targets of a widespread, often ethnically driven campaign of murder. Many have fled their homes, or even the country, to protect their families. Doctors, engineers, professors and even teachers seek new careers in parts of Iraq where their ethnic or sectarian group is in the majority. But one class of professionals cannot escape the violence because its...

GORNO-ALTAISK, September 6 (Itar-Tass) - The Prosecutor's Office of the Altai republic has exposed the murderer of journalist from Omsk Alexander Petrov and his family, First Deputy Prosecutor of the republic Sergei Shukhin told Itar-Tass on Wednesday. The murder was committed in early August. According to the official, “The suspect surrendered the murder weapon, although he had initially claimed...

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has condemned measures taken by courts in Brasilia and the southeastern state of Minas Gerais aimed at gagging the press just a few weeks before the 1 October 2006 general elections. "It does not take a degree in rocket science to know what Brasilia's regional electoral court seems to have realised, that press revelations about candidates can have a major impact on elections," the...

Tian Congming, president of Xinhua News Agency, said on Wednesday that Xinhua would enhance cooperation with the Japanese Jiji News Agency. Tian said in a meeting with visiting Jiji president Wakabayashi Seizo that Xinhua and Jiji have maintained steady cooperation. He said he believed the visit of Wakabayashi will serve to deepen the bilateral cooperation. Tian called on both sides to make joint...

MUMBAI - India's newspaper readership happily grew over the past year, according to the country's annual National Readership Survey (NRS) 2006. But it also found that magazine readership is down, television viewing is up and, controversially, Internet growth has slowed. The largest media exercise of its kind in the world, the study sample involved an unprecedented 284,373 house-to-house interviews...

The variety of perspectives offered by the online international news environment is limited. It offers little real information diversity, a situation sharply at odds with a decade and a half of fervour for the democratising potential of new media, a study by the University of Ulster's Centre for Media Research has concluded. Online news websites have improved access to international news but since...

New York, September 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the jail sentences given to two journalists in Senegal for defamation. A court in the capital Dakar on Tuesday handed down six-month suspended prison sentences to Alioune Ndiaye and Saliou Sambe, respectively director and reporter with the private daily L’Observateur, according to local news reports and CPJ sources. They...

Bianet-Turkish courts are geared up to hear 45 press and freedom of expression cases until the end of the year. First case starts with the Kirandi trial on September 8 while eight journalists, writers and publishers are to face judges on October 5. With the judiciary recess ending on September 6, bianet has established that Turkish courts are to hear 45 press and freedom of expression cases until...

CHINA is planning to bring more honesty and transparency in reporting newspaper circulation data as it launches an inspection on the circulation figures in newspapers from 11 cities, Xinhua news agency reported. These cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Chengdu, said a circular released ahead of the 2007 newspaper circulation season by the General Administration of...

(IPYS/IFEX) - During the second week of August 2006, all unsold copies of the ninth edition of the Social Observatory's magazine, "Revista del Observatorio Social", were seized. The order was issued by Ouro Preto's ordinary court in the state of Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil, because of a report with the title "The Stone Age", published on 9 February, which had denounced the use of child...