News

(Adil Soz/IFEX) - The hearing of a lawsuit filed by Sergei Arhipov, the commander of a special police division, against PR-Agency Almaty International, which owns "Aina plus" newspaper, took place on 16 May 2006 at Medeu district court in Almaty. The lawsuit is in response to the 16 March publication of Arhipov's photograph in the newspaper. The photograph was published with the caption "Kara bet"...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has hailed the Macedonian parliament's approval on 10 May 2006 of a criminal code amendment proposed by the government decriminalizing defamation. Previously, journalists convicted of defamation faced up to three years in prison. "A candidate for EU membership, Macedonia is one of the few European countries to amend its laws to allow more press freedom," the...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the brutal and unfair arrests of Odelín Alfonso, a regular contributor to the Cubanet website, and Milisa Valle Ricardo of the Jóvenes sin Censura news agency, on 13 May 2006, and the continued detention of Alfonso without any specific charges being put to him. "These arrests reveal once again an unfairness and denial of justice. No real...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has issued an urgent appeal for the release of Tchanguiz Vatankhah, the director of Radio Brakoss and president of the Chad Union of Privately-Owned Radio Stations (URPT), whose state of health has deteriorated markedly, according to a human rights activist who has seen him in detention. Held at police headquarters in N'Djamena since his arrest on 28 April...

Richard Stengel, a long-time writer and editor at Time magazine and the former head of its Web site, was named its managing editor yesterday, the 16th person to hold the job in the magazine's 83-year history. Mr. Stengel, 51, will oversee the newsweekly, which has a circulation of four million, and its Web site, Time.com, which draws more than three million unique visitors a month, a number that...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has urged the German authorities to carry out a full investigation into the spying on investigative journalists that was reportedly carried out by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from the early 1990s until the autumn of 2005. A parliamentary committee was due to question the BND on 16 May about its extensive clandestine monitoring of the press in which...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for an investigation into the apparent links between the paramilitary United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) and a bodyguard assigned to protect independent journalist Pedro Cárdenas. Cárdenas has told the press freedom organisation that one of his bodyguards, provided by the Administrative Security Department (DAS), tried to recruit an AUC...

New York, May 16, 2006 - The Supreme Court in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan today ordered the release from pre-trial detention of Viktor Shmakov, the 63-year-old editor-in-chief of Provintsialniye Vesti (Provincial News), according to local press reports. The court said authorities did not have enough evidence to hold Shmakov on the grounds that he would continue his "extremist activities"...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is deeply concerned over the rejection of accreditation for Taiwanese journalists to cover the 59th annual World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, for the third year in a row. "The World Health Organisation's (WHO) refusal to accredit Taiwanese journalists is discriminatory and is undermining the ability of the Taiwanese media to cover world affairs...

BEIJING -- A freelance writer was sentenced to 12 years in prison yesterday, receiving an unusually harsh penalty amid one of China's most severe media crackdowns since the 1980s. The sentencing of Yang Tianshui on subversion charges was one of a flurry of court actions yesterday against Chinese reporters. In Beijing, prosecutors filed a new indictment against a Chinese researcher for The New York...