Corruption and Crime

An Ecuadoran appellate court should overturn the libel conviction of editor Enrique Palacio, and the country’s legislators should reform archaic defamation laws that do not meet international standards for freedom of expression, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Palacio was sentenced Friday to three years in prison in connection with a commentary about a senior government...

A series of death threats have been received by Marites Dañguilan Vitug, editor-in-chief of the online news outlet Newsbreak, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Vitug, a veteran editor and reporter based in Manila, told New York-based CPJ she received four threatening, anonymous text messages on her mobile phone between Monday and today. The first message, received Monday...

Colombian journalist Clodomiro Castilla Ospino was dead shot on Friday by an unidentified gunman in the northern city of Montería, according to local press reports. Castilla, 50, editor and publisher of local news magazine El Pulso del Tiempo, was reading a book outside his home in Montería around 9 p.m., when an unidentified gunman shot him at least eight times. A second man picked up the...

Latvian media owner Grigorijs Ņemcovs was the victim of an apparent contract killing on April 16 in Daugavpils, the largest city in the southeastern region of Latgale, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Publisher of the regional newspaper Million and owner of a local TV station of the same name, Ņemcovs was shot twice in the head at close range when he went to a meeting in a café. He...

The Kyrgyz government has pressured several radio and television stations to stop carrying programming from the Kyrgyz service of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Four private radio stations and one television channel in northern Kyrgyzstan—including two outlets in the capital, Bishkek—halted RFE/RL programming...

Unidentified attackers gunned down Honduran journalist Nahúm Palacios Arteaga in the city of Tocoa on Sunday, the third deadly attack against the Honduran press in the last two weeks, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting news reports. "We condemn the murder of Nahúm Palacios Arteaga and urge authorities to swiftly bring those responsible to justice,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ...

The Minsk police on Tuesday raided the offices of the independent news website Charter 97, the independent newspaper Narodnaya Volya, and the home office of freelance reporter Irina Khalip, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Masked officers with the Leninsky District Police Department in Minsk confiscated computers, equipment, and electronic documents at the three locations as...

The Jordanian State Security Court last week banned news media from covering corruption allegations involving the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company and several leading national figures, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Yousef Faouri, attorney-general at the State Security Court, issued an order on March 9 banning the press from reporting or commenting on the case without his...

Mexican reporter Evaristo Pacheco Solís was found shot to death on Friday in the city of Chilpancingo, in the crime-ravaged state of Guerrero, the Committee to Protect Journalists said quoting news reports. Pacheco, 33, a reporter with the weekly Visión Informativa was shot several times with a small calibre pistol, and his body was left along the side of a rural road, according to local news...

There has been an alarming wave of drug-related violence in the Mexican city of Reynosa, near the Texas border, which is endangering the news media and causing widespread self-censorship, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In the past two weeks, several journalists have been abducted and one reporter has died in unclear circumstances, according to press reports and CPJ interviews...