Controversies & Scandals

COLOMBO (AFP) - Sri Lanka's top defence official summoned Britain's envoy Thursday after he expressed solidarity with an editor facing death threats, diplomats said. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse "invited" British high commissioner (ambassador) Dominick Chilcott to his tightly-guarded office at short notice Thursday, a high commission spokesman said. "They talked about the role of the...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - The headquarters of Mizzima News, a SEAPA partner and interim member of International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), was sealed by New Delhi police and municipal officers on 16 April 2007, reports its editor-in-chief Soe Myint. "All our computers and files are inside the rooms and we cannot take them out," said Soe Myint in an immediate e-mail to SEAPA. Authorities did not...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Radio host Don Imus was dumped by CBS Radio on Thursday in an inglorious end to a 30-year career that erupted in controversy over racist and sexist comments about a women's college basketball team. CBS's decision to nix the popular "Imus in the Morning" show, which mixed locker-room humor with interviews with top stars and politicians, followed days of uproar after he called...

CBS News said yesterday it planned to install a new level of editorial oversight to its Web site since revelations that the CBS anchor Katie Couric read a plagiarized commentary on the site last week. CBS has fired the producer who wrote the piece for Ms. Couric, and said yesterday it was investigating to see if the producer, whose name CBS has not disclosed, had written any previous commentaries...

A journalist-humourist in Peru has been given a suspended sentence of four years and a fine of 3.400 nuevos soles (approx US$ 1,100) for plagiarising his own novel. On March 22, Judge Sonia Salvador Ludeña, of the Sixth Criminal Court of Lima (Sexto Juzgado Penal de Lima), sentenced the journalist and humourist Nicolás Yerovi to a suspended sentence of four years and a fine of 3.400 nuevos soles...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times abruptly quit on Thursday after the paper killed a special edition of its opinion section that had been edited by a Hollywood producer with ties to his girlfriend. Andres Martinez, in an angry note posted on his Times blog, said the paper's decision to scrap the section edited by movie producer Brian Grazer and planned for...

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Time Warner Inc. agreed to pay $117.7 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the California Public Employees Retirement System over the 2001 merger with AOL. Calpers's 2003 suit alleged accounting irregularities at AOL, the Internet service company that combined with New York-based Time Warner in January 2001. The settlement is Time Warner's fourth this year related to the...

The US military has defended the erasing by an American soldier of journalists' footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The military said that publication could have compromised an investigation and led to false public conclusions. An Afghan man cries as he shouts anti-American slogans after a car bomber attacked...

The Associated Press (AP) and CNN have apologised to Taiwan Vice-President Annette Lu for a controversial article about earlier last week, the country’s Central News Agency has reported quoting a Presidential office release. Taiwan Vice-President Annette Lu announces her candidacy for president, Tuesday, March 6, 2007, in Taipei, Taiwan. Lu's chances of winning next year's elections are slim, and...

NEW YORK - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Monday it fired a former systems technician who allegedly recorded phone conversations between the company's public relations office and a newspaper reporter. Wal-Mart said the technician, who it did not identify, also intercepted text messages using his own personal equipment. The retailer said he was acting alone, but declined to say what his motive may have...