Corruption and Crime

A car bomb exploded outside the offices of Televisa, Mexico’s largest media organization, in the early hours of Friday, local time. The attack happened in the capital of Tamaulipas state, Ciudad Victoria, about 220 miles south of the Texas border. Although no one was injured in the blast, according to Carlos Loret de Mola, host of Primero Noticias for Televisa on its channel Canal 2, damage was...

Honduran radio reporter Israel Zelaya Díaz was found shot to death on Tuesday along a rural road near the northern city of San Pedro Sula, the latest in an alarming string of journalist murders in the country. New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Honduran authorities to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation into Zelaya's killing. Zelaya...

The alleged mastermind in the 2009 murder of Venezuelan journalist Orel Sambrano was arrested Thursday last in Colombia and is now facing extradition to Venezuela, local and international press reported. Colombian authorities arrested Walid Makled García in the city of Cúcuta, near the border with Venezuela. A warrant was issued in 2008 for Makled in Venezuela on drug trafficking charges...

President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine is taking control of the case of an investigative journalist who has gone missing. In that role, Yanukovych ordered top law enforcement officials on Friday to "make every possible and impossible effort" to find Vasyl Klymentyev, the editor of a newspaper in the eastern city of Kharkiv. Klymentyev, chief editor and reporter for the Kharkiv-based weekly...

Vasyl Klymentyev, chief editor and reporter for the Kharkiv-based weekly newspaper Novyi Stil (New Style) has been missing for a week, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. According to local news reports, on August 11, Klymentyev was seen leaving his home in the city of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, with an unknown man in a BMW. The reports did not...

Burundian authorities freed the director of a weekly publication arrested this week on defamation charges, the journalist said Friday. Thierry Ndayishimiye, the director of the Arc-en-ciel weekly, was released on Thursday, two days after he was detained over an article in which he accused the director of the national water and electricity firm of trying to cover up embezzlement of $110,000....

A car bomb exploded early Thursday morning outside the building of national Caracol Radio in the capital city of Bogotá, causing serious damage and injuring at least nine people, local new reports said. President Juan Manuel Santos, who took office on Saturday, described the explosion as "a terrorist act," and said it was intended to create a climate of fear. Attorney-General Guillermo Mendoza...

Ulises González García, editor of Mexican regional weekly La Opinión, who was abducted from his home in Jérez, in the state of Zacatecas, on July 29, was released in the early hours of August 9 and was rushed to a private hospital for treatment to the injuries received during his abduction, some of which appeared to have been caused by torture. Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) expressed...

The Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) has sued magazine Rojname for $1 billion. A report published in the magazine on July 20 had accused the KDP and its ruling coalition partner, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), of helping smuggle refined petroleum products into Iran in violation of the international sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic by the UN Security Council. The article accused the...

Burundian police on Tuesday arrested Thierry Ndayishimiye, chief editor of the private weekly Arc-en-Ciel, on defamation charges related to a story about alleged government corruption, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Ndayishimiye is the second Burundian editor to be jailed in less than a month. The state prosecutor summoned Ndayishimiye to a...