News

(CJES/IFEX) - The Agency of National News (ANN) announced on 19 April 2006 that its correspondent Alla Tuchkova's accreditation card to the Moscow City Duma (the city legislature, MCD) was siezed on 18 April by employees of the press service of the MCD. According to ANN, from the comments posted on its website, Alla Tuchkova reported on 5 April that "deputies of the Moscow City Duma did not want...

SHANGHAI, China -- From Rolling Stone to online essayists to a scrappy Beijing newspaper, a wide range of media have felt the pressure of an official campaign to tighten controls on what Chinese see and read. Under President Hu Jintao, who was in the United States this week, the communist government is challenging a growing public appetite for information with a stepped-up campaign to block...

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Times suspended an Internet blog written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter because the paper says he posted items using assumed names. The newspaper is still investigating the postings on its online Golden State blog by Michael Hiltzik, a Times spokeswoman said. "Hiltzik admitted Thursday that he posted items on the paper's website, and on other websites, under...

The year-long detention without trial of a Hong Kong reporter accused by China of spying for Taiwan is “not human”, activists pushing for his release said on Friday, but there was no clear end in sight. Ching Cheong, who worked for the Singapore Straits Times newspaper, was taken into custody in southern China a year ago on Saturday and formally arrested in August. His was one of a series of...

Amritsar, Apr 20: Three policemen, including two Head Constables, were today suspended for allegedly indulging in an immoral act with a woman in a car with tinted glasses in a posh area of the city, police said. Senior Superintendent of Police Sudhanshu S Srivastava said that the incident came to light after a team of a private news channel reached the spot on the Mall Road here on Monday. The SSP...

Manila, April 20. (PTI): Kerala-based journalist M Suchitra was among the three Indian scribes to be honoured at the 2006 Developing Asia Journalism Awards held here. Founder and Director of Quest Features and Footage in Cochin, M Suchitra 43, became the first ever female to win the overall Development Journalist of the Year title for her article on high maternal and infant deaths among tribals...

New York, April 18, 2006 - More than 200 Nepalese journalists have been detained since April 4 while participating in pro-democracy protests to demand press freedom or while covering the nationwide demonstrations, according to information compiled by the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ). The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for the immediate release of the 31 journalists who remain...

(RSF/IFEX) - The conviction on 19 April 2006 of "Minivan" journalist Abdullah Saeed and his sentence to life imprisonment was engineered by the authorities in order to harm the country's only opposition newspaper, Reporters Without Borders has said, calling for his retrial by an impartial court and urging President Gayoom to keep his promise to allow more press freedom. Saeed's colleagues also...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 11 April 2006, Mireya Zurita, current editor of "El Siglo" newspaper, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for authorizing, in 2003, the publication of a press release which suggested that Deputy Police Inspector Terry Rojas, head of investigations at the Institute for Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations (Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas, Penales y Criminalísticas...

New York, April 20, 2006 - Two senior journalists from a leading Gambian newspaper were released without charge today after three weeks in the custody of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). Editor Musa Saidykhan and General Manager Madi Ceesay of the Banjul-based Independent were told to report to the NIA Friday morning, Ceesay told CPJ. A third journalist from The Independent, Lamin Fatty...