International

Shareholders of Thomson Corporation and Reuters have approved plans for the Canadian firm to buy the British-based media and information group and create the world's biggest provider of financial data. The approval in separate shareholder meetings in Toronto and London clears the way for completion of the deal on April 17, the two firms said. A statement issued from Thomson's operations...

Al-Jazeera is quite badly hit—it is facing mass departures owing to its English channel's alleged anti-American bias. Three three senior journalists have quit in recent times, more are said to be in the queue. Dave Marash, the most high-profile US journalist on Al-Jazeera's English language service, left the channel last week, attacking its narrowing world view and increasingly anti-American...

NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, plans to start an online TV channel to improve the image of the Western military alliance. NATO TV will be launched April 2 at a summit in Bucharest, Romania, alliance spokesman James Appathurai said Wednesday last. The new TV channel is the result of close cooperation between the NATO Public Diplomacy Division and the Danish Government to improve...

Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said. Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Friday called on the management at the Associated Press (AP) to reconsider the proposed sale of its French service in a deal that they say could seriously undermine its quality and objectivity. Journalists working for the AP French service, which provides news for French media, held a one day strike on Thursday, shutting down the wire in protest of...

Google shareholders will propose that the Web search company take steps to ensure freedom of Internet access and establish a review of its operations' effect on human rights, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday. A Reuters report said that in one proposal expected to be submitted at the company's 2008 annual meeting on May 8, shareholders will ask Google to commit to certain standards...

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and other publishers organisations have welcomed Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s statement supporting the aim of the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) to give publishers more control over the use of their content. Speaking to a reporter in Sydney earlier this week, Schmidt said that the only barriers to Google’s implementation of ACAP were technical, and...

Dow Jones & Co, recently bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, has struck a deal with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to distribute news from the Paris-based agency through its Dow Jones Newswires unit, replacing a partnership of more than 40 years with the Associated Press (AP). Dow Jones Newswires will also expand its global editorial staff as part of a broader investment in financial news, the...

The Google vs newspapers issue has surfaced again. The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has again called on Google to embrace a new publishing standard that allows website terms and conditions to be placed in machine-readable format so that publishers can have a say in how news aggregators and search engine companies use their content. Google European executive Ron Jonas was quoted as saying...

Press freedom organisation Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has accused UNESCO of "grovelling" to authoritarian governments by dropping sponsorship of a free speech day on Wednesday. Paris-based RSF organised its second Online Free Expression Day on which it published a list of "Internet Enemies" — governments that imprison Internet users. RSF accused the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural...