A media expert yesterday urged journalists and reporters to be more conscientious and disciplined, especially when covering stories in which a suspect has not yet been proven guilty. The call came in the wake of the suicide of a junior high school teacher in Taichung City who was accused last week of having an affair with one of his students. The teacher was being prosecuted for the affair after...
The Jammu and Kashmir police on Thursday registered a case against the editor of India Today for publishing a picture of Islam's holiest shrine of Mecca on a playing card in the magazine's latest edition. Since Islam prohibits gambling, protestors in the state are regarding the picture of the shrine on a playing card as an insult. THROW BACK: Policemen throw back stones at protesters during a...
New Delhi, March. 2 (PTI): Alok Tomar, Editor of 'Senior India' magazine, arrested for reproducing a caricature of Prophet Muhammed drawn by a Danish cartoonist, was today granted bail by a Delhi court. Metropolitan Magistrate Chandra Shekhar, granted bail to the Hindi journalist for a bond of Rs 50,000 with a personal surety of like amount. Tomar was arrested by the Defence Colony Police in South...
RIYADH, 26 February 2006 – As a result of relaxing censorship rules in the Kingdom, a growing number of Saudi writers are emerging on the Kingdom’s literary scene. This seems to be the consensus of attendees of Riyadh’s International Book Fair, which runs through Thursday. Abdullah Almojel, deputy minister for cultural relations at the Ministry of Higher Education, told Arab News that over 70...
LONDON – Outspoken London Mayor Ken Livingstone may not be reporting for work Wednesday at the city's egg-shaped town hall on the banks of the River Thames. Unless he appeals successfully, he will sit at home, serving a four-week suspension for comparing a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard. The mayor – a veteran of many foot-in-mouth controversies – had argued he was exercising...
I think as I please And this gives me pleasure. My conscience decrees, This right I must treasure. My thoughts will not cater To duke or dictator, No man can deny - Die gedanken sind frei. (Sixteenth-century German peasant song revived as a protest anthem against the Nazi regime) The news on Monday that an Austrian court has sentenced crackpot British historian David Irving to three years'...
I wholly sympathise with those anguished editors, who have demanded that the PoMo Muslims, my acronym for poor and moderate Muslims, ought to speak up more often. However, the PoMo Muslims are so called because of the poverty of what they have left to say. Besides they are easily outnumbered by the genuine PoMo Muslims. On the other hand, for the last 25 years, more particularly in the last five...
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU justice ministers have agreed to halt far-reaching plans to establish common EU rules on cross-border disputes, following fears that parts of the law would violate freedom of expression. The proposed law aims to define which national law applies in disputes where individuals or companies from different countries are involved, including non-EU member states. However...
The trial of a Chinese researcher charged with exposing state secrets while working for the New York Times is expected before the end of March, his lawyer said on Wednesday. Zhao Yan worked for the paper before his arrest in September 2004. He faces 10 years in jail or more after security officials charged him with telling the paper details of rivalry between China’s outgoing Communist Party...
MEXICO CITY, Feb 15 (Reuters) - A Mexican governor refused to resign on Wednesday in a scandal over taped conversations in which he and a business magnate appear to discuss jailing and intimidating a journalist for writing a damaging book. Gov. Mario Marin of Puebla state told a news conference the audio tapes implicating him in a plot against Cancun journalist Lydia Cacho were false. “There is...
