News

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has requested that Burundi's intelligence service drop its legal proceedings against Burundi Press Agency (Agence burundaise de presse, ABP) journalist Aloys Kabura. Kabura has been detained in the central prison of Ngozi (northern Burundi) since 31 May 2006. The journalist, who recently wrote an article implicating the police in sugar smuggling, was...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, June 1, 2006 - A year after Lebanese journalist Samir Qassir was murdered in a Beirut car bombing, those responsible remain at large. The Committee to Protect Journalists reiterates its call to Lebanese authorities and the international community to work urgently to bring to justice those behind Qassir's murder, and the murder and maiming of two other journalists last year...

About 70 reporters, editors, photographers and newsroom administrators have taken early retirement offers from The Washington Post Co., as the company's flagship newspaper works to contain costs while circulation continues a slow slide. Some familiar and veteran bylines will exit The Post's pages, such as those of political writer Thomas B. Edsall, science writer Guy Gugliotta, foreign...

Top law enforcement officials have asked leading Internet companies to keep histories of the activities of Web users for up to two years to assist in criminal investigations of child pornography and terrorism, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller outlined their request to executives from Google, Microsoft, AOL, Comcast, Verizon...

GOOGLE'S RECENT FORAY INTO PRINT advertising fell short of the company's expectations, a company executive said Wednesday. Speaking on a conference call with investors and the media, Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president for product management, said the venture to auction off print ads in magazines, which launched in February, has been one of the biggest disappointments in the last...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced its condolences to the family of TV sports presenter Jaafar Ali, who was gunned down on the morning of 31 May 2006 in Baghdad. He was the third journalist to be killed in Iraq in the space of 48 hours and the eleventh employee of the national TV station Al-Iraqiya to be killed since the start of the war in March 2003. Alarmed by the surge in...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has hailed a Californian appeal court's "historic" decision on 26 May 2006 that online journalists and bloggers have the same right to protect their sources as other kinds of journalists. The ruling was issued in a case between the US electronics manufacturer Apple and websites that posted confidential information about some of its products. "We have often...

(IFJ/IFEX) - May 31, 2006: The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns a violent attack in which at least 25 journalists were injured by members of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) during a demonstration protesting the harassment of journalists in Kashita on May 29, 2006. "We call on BNP members to cease any further attacks on journalists and demand that those...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders is very worried about Abed Tavanchech, a blogger and student at Tehran's Amirkabir polytechnic university, who has been missing since 26 May 2006 and may well have been arrested after posting photos and reports about the demonstrations taking place at his university for the past few weeks. "Tavanchech is a courageous blogger who may well have fallen prey to...

(IPI/IFEX) - Edinburgh, 30 May 2006: At the Board Meeting of the International Press Institute, in Edinburgh, Scotland on 29 May 2006, the IPI Executive Board voted unanimously to keep Ethiopia, Nepal, Russia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe on the IPI Watch List. Speaking generally about the Watch List countries, IPI Director Johann P. Fritz said, "Nepal is the only country on the IPI Watch List where...