News

New York, May 23, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed at a spate of attacks on the press in the run-up to the July 30 elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Monday, armed assailants smashed and looted equipment at Kinshasa-based broadcaster Radiotélévision Message de Vie (RTMV), forcing it off the air for the second time this month, according to CPJ sources. The press...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has called on Ethiopia's information and culture minister, Hailu Berhan, to explain why several websites critical of the government have been inaccessible in the country since 17 May 2006. Ethiopians have also seen all publications hosted by http://www.blogspot.com disappear from the Internet. Even though the authorities have made no announcement, it is...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has welcomed a Supreme Court ruling on 18 May 2006 suppressing article 8 of the 1992 National Broadcasting Act and article 15 (1) of the 1991 Publications and Newspapers Act as incompatible with a constitutional provision guaranteeing press freedom. The first article gave the government the right to cancel the licences of radio and TV stations that broadcast...

(FMM/IFEX) - On 24 May 2006, three Tamil-language trainee journalists of the Sri Lanka College of Journalism (SLCJ) were harassed by students protesting recent violent activities by the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The trainees had to take shelter in a police station for more than three hours, on a complaint made by them against video filming by the trainees. The protest was...

An expert witness today told a city court, trying the journalist Shivani Bhatnagar murder case, that a polygraph test of the main accused suspended IPS officer R K Sharma was never conducted, saya a Zee News report. Deposing before the Additional Sessions Judge Rajender Kumar, Vibha Rani Ray stated that she had conducted the polygraph tests of Shivani’s husband, Rakesh Bhatnagar, her sister...

McClatchy Co. has agreed to sell Philadelphia's major daily newspapers and web site Philly.com to a group of local investors for $562 million, most of which will be borrowed from banks. "We got it," said a jubilant Brian P. Tierney as he rushed through The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News lobby this afternoon to a meeting with publisher Joe Natoli. "We signed every line." Tierney, a...

The guitar strums and a male voice intones: "I always tell myself, just a half hour. But six hours later I’m still on." The chorus kicks in: "MySpace is the place where I can go to be free. MySpace is the place where I can go to read about me . . . " The song is a satirical rock track written by a Los Angeles band called The Fresh which, like many others, uses the hugely popular social networking...

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Internet search engine Topix.net and The Associated Press are teaming up in an attempt to send more visitors to newspaper sites responsible for breaking stories that are picked up across the Web. As part of a 15-month agreement to be announced Tuesday, the AP will identify the stories that local papers contribute to the news cooperative so Topix's search engine can do a better...

The Voice of America's bureau in Baghdad has been closed for the past six months, ever since the government-funded agency withdrew its only reporter in Iraq after she was fired upon in an ambush and her security guard was later killed. All Western news organizations have struggled with the dangerous conditions in Iraq, which have led to such high-profile incidents as the kidnapping of Christian...

When Indian-administered Kashmir's first woman's magazine, She, was launched in Srinagar last month, a lot of people went to the vendors to get their copies. But they came away disappointed because the magazine - which is not connected to the Western glossy of the same name - was meant only for complimentary circulation. But in spite of that, She has attracted more than a normal share of interest...