Americas

The Boston Herald announced plans on Tuesday to lay off 130-160 workers under a plan to outsource printing operations following a drop in circulation, says a Reuters report. Press workers, mailers, engravers and paper handlers would be affected by the cuts, the Herald said in a story on the cuts posted on its website, www.bostonherald.com. According to Reuters: A Chicopee, Massachusetts, plant...

Radio Sucre deputy news director Raúl Rodríguez was gunned down in in the western Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, according to Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The attack took place at about 7:20 a.m. (local time) as Rodríguez returned to his home in the northern district of Guayacanes after hosting his early morning programme "Good Morning Ecuador" on Radio Sucre. He was getting out of...

Bomb attacks were carried out Saturday against the privately-owned television station Canal 4-Unitel in Yacuiba, Tarija department, southern Bolivia, and against the radio station Radio Kollasuyo in Potosí, in the department of the same name in the country's southwest. Political and media polarisation that is undermining the country was behind both attacks, which caused severe damage in both cases...

Ecuadorian journalist Raúl Rodríguez Coronel was shot to death this morning in Guayaquil, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). CPJ is investigating all possible links between Rodríguez’s work as a journalist and his death. Rodríguez, news vice president and host of the daily news and opinion programme “Buenos Días Ecuador” (Good Morning Ecuador) on the Guayaquil...

Two unidentified men beat and stabbed Luis Pablo Guardado Negrete, deputy director of the local daily Noticias de la Bahía, on Saturday afternoon inside his office in the western Mexican state of Nayarit. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the local authorities to investigate the attack and bring all those responsible to justice. At 3 p.m. on Saturday, two men arrived at the...

Two unidentified men beat and stabbed Luis Pablo Guardado Negrete, deputy director of the local daily Noticias de la Bahía, on Saturday afternoon inside his office in the western Mexican state of Nayarit. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the local authorities to investigate the attack and bring all those responsible to justice. At 3 p.m. on Saturday, two men arrived at the...

Journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, whose residence was searched by Mexican military personnel in May 2008 and who has subsequently been harassed by members of the Army, has sought asylum in the United States, fearing for his life and that of his son. The correspondent for the regional newspaper El Diario del Noroeste in Ascensión, a municipality in the northwestern state of Chihuahua, Gutiérrez...

Colombian journalist Mario Alberto Puello was freed from captivity on June 19 by members of the National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberación Nacional, ELN) guerrilla group. ELN members handed Puello, who was abducted on February 17 in La Guajira department, over to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) personnel, according to Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). Puello and...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has described as "absurd" a conviction for "electoral propaganda" against the daily A Folha de São Paulo and the magazine Veja after they published interviews with a prospective candidate for municipal elections in São Paulo in the south-east of the country. The worldwide press freedom organisation said the verdict placed an unacceptable limit on press freedom and...

Odnei Fernando da Silva, the civilian police inspector who is accused of heading the militia that kidnapped and tortured two O Dia journalists and their driver in Rio de Janeiro's Batan favela on May 14, surrendered to the authorities on June 16. Also known as "01", "Dinei" and "Águia", Da Silva went with his lawyer to the headquarters of the Department for Repression of Criminal Actions and...