News

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the Malaysian government's suspension for two weeks of the publishing permit of the Chinese-language Berita Petang Sarawak newspaper for reprinting controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. The cartoons accompanied a February 4 article headlined, "We are prepared for the jihad war," the official government news agency Bernama said in...

Chief Russian media figures have made an open statement against the closure of a newspaper that had published a picture of Jesus Christ, Moses, Buddha and Mohammed. Administration members of MediaSoyuz, the union of Russian journalists, have said in their statement published by Vremya Novostei newspaper on Sunday that the situation should be considered "in the sphere of journalist ethics...

SHANGHAI, China -- A Web-surfing Chinese professor was nonplussed to find personal attacks against him posted on a blog. So when the operators of the hosting Web site refused to remove the offending language, he decided to sue them for harm to his reputation, in what Chinese media on Thursday called the first such case to come before the country's courts. Web site Blogcn.com had told Nanjing...

Maybe you've heard: Blogs are a vanishing fad -- this year's digital Pet Rock. Or a business bubble about to pop. Or a sucker's bet for new-media fame seekers. Recent weeks have seen the rise of a cottage industry in Whither Blogging? articles. New York magazine cast cold water on newly minted bloggers' dreams with an examination of the divide between a handful of A-list blogs and countless B-list...

SAN FRANCISCO – After spending the last decade building its brand around a cartoon character named Jeeves, Ask.com wants everyone to forget the dainty butler and remember its long-overlooked Internet search engine as the next best thing to Google. To make its point, Ask.com is jettisoning Jeeves as its corporate mascot on Monday and unveiling a retooled website that's designed to make it easier to...

The Guardian and Rzeczpospolita have been named the World's Best-Designed Newspapers at the 27th annual The Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition of the Society for News Design (SND). Meeting at Syracuse University in New York, five judges reviewed 389 newspapers from 44 countries to decide the 2005 winners. "Many newspapers achieved a high standard of overall design, photography and...

Panos London, Internews Network and the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) have launched a one year pilot phase of the Health Journalism Partnership, to build better health journalism in countries with the most acute public health crises. In the past decade, global funding to address critical health issues such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and childhood diseases has grown...

HERE’S a quiz. Which UK newspaper printed a headline last week about John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, using yellow type on a lurid green background? Which newspaper asked on its front page: Is Oprah really a Zulu? And which had Catwalk Cattiness billed as its most enticing item? Anyone nominating the Sun, the Daily Mirror, or the Daily Star should remain in class and pay attention. The...

RIYADH, 26 February 2006 – As a result of relaxing censorship rules in the Kingdom, a growing number of Saudi writers are emerging on the Kingdom’s literary scene. This seems to be the consensus of attendees of Riyadh’s International Book Fair, which runs through Thursday. Abdullah Almojel, deputy minister for cultural relations at the Ministry of Higher Education, told Arab News that over 70...

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 (Bernama) -- The Internal Security Ministry on Saturday suspended for two weeks effective tomorrow the publishing permit of Berita Petang Sarawak newspaper for publishing a seditious article in Chinese which also carried the offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is also Internal Security Minister, decided to suspend the...