The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the successful mediation of a dispute between Indonesia's police forces and Tempo magazine by the country's Press Council. The June 28 issue of Tempo featured an illustration showing a uniformed policeman with piggy banks on its cover, for the story "Fat Bank Accounts of Police Officers", on alleged suspicious bank accounts held by...
Tunisian authorities have arrested Fahem Boukadous, a correspondent for the satellite television station Al-Hiwar al-Tunisi. The police arrested Boukadous Thursday at Farhat Hached Hospital in Sousse. The journalist had been discharged Wednesday after being treated for respiratory problems, according to news reports. His wife told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he...
Three journalists have been detained in Ivory Coast since Tuesday, after they refused to disclose sources for an investigative report detailing the results of a government probe into corruption in the coffee and cocoa export trade, according to local journalists and news reports. Ivorian State Prosecutor Raymond Tchimou, who summoned staffers from the private daily Le Nouveau Courrier—Managing...
An Egyptian court has sentenced a jailed leader to a year in prison for defaming a former minister more than 14 years ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A Cairo appeals court last month sentenced Magdy Hussein, who served as editor of the long-banned opposition newspaper Al-Shaab, to a one-year jail term in a defamation case filed in 1996 by the family of then-Interior...
Police in Rwanda arrested the editor of a private newspaper on Thursday last in connection with a series of articles critical of the government, according to local journalists. Agnès Uwimana was taken into custody in the capital, Kigali, over allegations that her Kinyarwanda-language weekly Umurabyo had published stories “inciting the public to disobey,” “articles related to division and ethnicity...
CNN has fired a senior editor for Mideast news after she published a Twitter message that said she respected the late Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, branded a terrorist by the US, American and UK media said Thursday. Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah, one of Shiite Islam’s highest religious authorities and an early mentor of Hizbullah, died in Beirut Sunday. The Guardian reported: [ Link] The...
None of the Valley-based newspapers could hit the stands on Thursday as government restricted the movement of scribes and other staff members of various news organisations, the Greater Kashmir has reported.. The state government had cancelled curfew passes of media persons on Wednesday with police and paramilitary CRPF troopers enforcing curfew strictly at Press Enclave in Srinagar. The last time...
Denmark's top prosecutor on Friday charged a Somali man with terrorism for allegedly trying to kill a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Mohammed. Joergen Steen Soerensen said the man, who cannot be named under a court order, wanted to "seriously frighten the population" and destabilise Denmark in the January attack on Kurt Westergaard. The 28-year-old allegedly forced himself into Westergaard...
Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who caricatured the Prophet Mohammed and caused outrage in the Muslim world, said Monday he is quitting because he is getting old, the Associated Press has reported. "One has to stop at some point," Westergaard said, adding that he has been working since age 23, first as a teacher and then as an artist. He turns 75 on July 13. Westergaard said he hopes his...
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has tightened rules on media relations for the US military, only days after the top general in Afghanistan was sacked over disparaging comments he and aides made in an interview. In a three-page memo sent Friday to senior military and civilian Pentagon staff, Gates said he was "concerned that the department has grown lax in how we engage with the media, often in...
