News

(HRW/IFEX) - (New York, June 7, 2006) - Authorities in Bangladesh must promptly and impartially investigate and prosecute violent attacks against journalists last week by supporters of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Human Rights Watch said today. Nine days after the attacks, the police have made no arrests and a local newspaper remains closed. The attacks and slow government...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - Burma's military government has ordered domestic journals and magazines to stop publishing the columns of veteran journalist Ludu Sein Win after an opinion piece critical of the junta appeared in the "International Herald Tribune" (IHT) on May 23, 2006. "Our journal can't use any of Saya Ludu Sein Win's articles because the censorship board ordered us not to publish," the New Delhi...

Press freedom worldwide is deteriorating, with 38 journalists murdered in the past six months and increasing pressure on freedom of expression in many countries, according to the annual half-year review of press freedom by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The report, presented Saturday to the Board of the Paris-based WAN on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum...

Google has admitted for the first time that it compromised its principles when it entered the Chinese market and agreed to toe Beijing’s strict line on censorship. Speaking in Washington, Sergey Brin, Google’s billionaire co-founder, said the company, which operates under the motto "do no evil", had adopted "a set of rules that we weren’t comfortable with". In a hint that Google could adjust its...

NEW DELHI: A woman freelance journalist, who was convicted for allegedly leaking classified national secrets to ISI and other foreign agents, was ordered to be released by the Delhi High Court on the ground that the trial court has no jurisdiction to try the offence. Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed while setting aside the seven year conviction imposed by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, ordered that...

BANJUL (Reuters) - Gambian security forces released a local British Broadcasting Corporation reporter on Tuesday who was detained in a crackdown on journalists suspected of links to a controversial U.S.-based online newspaper. Lamin Cham, a correspondent for the BBC's English language African service, was picked up last Wednesday by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) on suspicion of links to...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, June 6, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalist is deeply concerned by attacks and threats against the press in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by suspected members of the two major Palestinian parties, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and the Palestine Liberation Organization's Fatah movement. On Monday, nearly 50 armed militants stormed a studio of Fatah-affiliated...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has published photographs showing the marks left on the body of a journalist from the blows he received from members of the National Guard while detained earlier this year in Gambia, where two journalists are still in detention. The journalist's identity and the circumstances of his imprisonment are known to Reporters Without Borders but are being withheld to...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned the current unprecedented level of Internet filtering in China, which means the Google.com search engine can no longer be accessed in most provinces - although the censored Chinese version, Google.cn, is still accessible - and software designed in the United States to get round censorship now only works with great difficulty. The organisation...

Newspaper circulations worldwide rose slightly in 2005 while newspaper advertising revenues showed the largest increase in four years, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) announced Monday. WAN said global newspaper sales were up 0.56 per cent over the year, and had increased 6 per cent over the past five years. Much of the sales growth last year was again in Asia. When free dailies are added...