Asia

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has offered condolences to the family and colleagues of Philippine journalist Jojo Trajano, who was killed in crossfire on Wednesday during a police raid of an alleged organised crime den near Manila. A group suspected of drug dealing and theft opened fire on police during the raid at around 2.30 a.m. this morning in Taytay Town, Rizal Province, fatally...

Two American journalists went on trial trial Thursday in North Korea on accusations of illegal entry and "hostile acts" in a case that could send them to a labour camp for 10 years. US television journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were on assignment for San Francisco-based Current TV when they were picked up on March 17. They were later charged with illegally entering the Democratic Peoples...

US-led coalition forces have arrested Noorajan Bahir, of radio Killid in Khost, eastern Afghanistan, along with his two brothers, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Bahir was arrested on Tuesday by coalition forces and members of the Afghan military and is now reportedly being held in the NATO base at Bagh-e-Sara. “It is essential and urgent that coalition forces’ officials provide...

The general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted in Sri Lanka, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a Colombo suburb on Monday. The attack came on a busy road during rush hour at 5:15 p.m. Jayantha's colleagues said witnesses at the scene told them six unidentified men in a white Toyota Hi Ace van with tinted glass windows grabbed...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on all parties to pursue diplomatic efforts to gain the release of detained US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are facing trial in North Korea this week. The families of the two journalists spoke out Monday morning on US television to urge diplomatic talks to resolve the detentions independent of the larger geopolitical issues on the...

Twenty journalists were injured in the massive suicide car bomb blast on Wednesday that killed at least 30 people and injured over 250, in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province. Offices of a number of newspapers and television stations were also damaged in the blast. According to the Punjab Union of Journalists (PUJ), more than 20 journalists and media workers suffered multiple...

Myanmarese (Burmese) military authorities have been urged to lift all restrictions on press coverage of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial. Some Burmese journalists have intermittently been allowed to attend the trial, which is taking place inside Insein prison, but no foreign reporter has been allowed in and the Burmese media are not able to cover it freely, according to Paris-based...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is launching an emergency appeal to provide emergency financial support to more than 100 journalists and their families who were forced to flee the intense conflict in northern Pakistan in late May 2009. The specific objectives of this internal appeal are to enable the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and the Khyber Union of Journalists...

The Philippines government must address a series of shootings that have targeted journalists on the southern island of Mindanao, the latest coming on Wednesday when gunmen critically wounded a local radio broadcaster, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. One of two men riding a motorcycle fired once at Harrison Manalac at about 7:45 p.m. Wednesday, according to local news...

Local police arrested one of the alleged gunmen in the 2005 killing of journalist Philip Agustin on May 13 in Pampanga, a province approximately 81 km from Manila, according to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR). The Philippine National Police in Central Luzon arrested Nilo "Boy" Morete in Poblacion village, Mabalacat town, Pampanga at around 3:30 p.m. (local time) on May 13...