Americas

During the weekend of July 26-27, unidentified individuals broke into the offices of CIMAC (Comunicación e Información de la Mujer), a Mexico City-based non-govermental organisation that reports on women's issues through the "Cimacnoticias" news agency. The assailants stole some of the organisation's equipment and destroyed a number of documents. CIMAC editor Carolina Velázquez explained in an...

A Panamanian judge has barred sports columnist Bienvenido Brown from leaving the country and ordered him to stand trial on criminal defamation charges filed in 2005. Eleventh Criminal Court Judge Josefina Sclopis issued the ruling on Friday against Brown, a columnist with the daily La Estrella de Panamá, the newspaper reported. The judge's decision stemmed from a criminal defamation suit against...

A federal judge in Santa Ana declined Thursday to order a reporter to reveal the names of federal officials who leaked information to him for a 2006 story about a grand jury investigation into a scheme to send sensitive military technology to China, the Los Angeles Times has reported. The details: Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz was subpoenaed to testify in federal court by US District Judge...

Unidentified individuals set fire to the home of critical journalist Jeso Carneiro on Sunday night in the northern city of Santarém. No one was injured but the house suffered considerable damage. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Brazilian authorities to investigate the attack and provide the necessary protection to allow Carneiro to continue working without...

California Judge Cormac Carney has ordered William Gertz, a national security reporter for the Washington Times, to appear in court for open-ended questioning on his reporting techniques. The order comes regarding Gertz's article discussing supposed espionage attempts by China in the United States. "Confidentiality of sources is essential to the news-gathering process. The judge's decision to have...

Spanish authorities have decided to reactivate the investigation into the 2004 murder of Antena 3 correspondent Ricardo Ortega, who was fatally shot in Haiti while covering the ouster of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. As part of this process, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) European consultant Borja Bergareche was one of several journalists who briefed Judge Pablo Ruz of the...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported an 8 percent reduction in its workforce, cutting 189 jobs, according to the Atlata Business Chronicle website. The staff cuts among its 2,300 full-timers will come between August and October and will include a combination of voluntary buyouts, involuntary layoffs and position eliminations, AJC said in a press release. AJC spokesperson Jennifer Morrow...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has voiced its protest against the detention without charge of an Associated Press (AP) journalist who was seized by US and Iraqi forces last month in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. Ahmed Nouri Raziak, a 38-year-old cameraman who has worked with AP Television News since 2003, was detained at his home in the Iraqi city of Tikrit on June 4, AP reported, and is...

Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's government has ordered Forum magazine be denied government advertising contracts in retaliation for its critical stance, the magazine's director, Eduardo Ibarra Aguirre, has alleged. In a July 2008 editorial, Ibarra Aguirre said that members of the presidential press team have instructed all government agencies to not place announcements in Forum/...

Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller and Chicago Tribune Editor-in-Chief Ann Marie Lipinski have resigned, seven months after real-estate billionaire Sam Zell completed his buyout of the company, says a Bloomberg News report. A successor to Hiller is expected to be named by late September, Tribune Chief Operating Officer Randy Michaels said on July 14 in a memo to employees. Lipinski became...