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(Associated Press): Hala Misrati once wrote romance tales about lost love. Now she's the ferocious face of Libya's regime, a star talk-show host on state TV lashing out daily against Moammar Gadhafi's enemies. She railed against a Libyan woman who claimed to Western journalists she had been raped by Gadhafi militiamen, calling her a "liar" and suggesting she was a "whore." On live TV, Misrati

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been given a press freedom award during a visit to Argentina. The University of La Plata said it was honouring him for his efforts to break "media monopolies" in Latin America and support "popular communication". Since becoming president in 1999 Chavez has set up the Telesur network, which offers a state-funded alternative to private television stations across...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) this weekend formally endorsed the appointment of Brazilian journalist and union activist Elisabeth Costa as the new General Secretary to replace Aidan White who is standing down at the end of this month after 24 years in the post. Elisabeth Costa is a veteran campaigner for union rights and press freedom in Latin America and has been a leading...

A journalist of newswire Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) has won the prestigious United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity for reportage on women's issues. Azera Parveen Rahman, principal correspondent with IANS, got the Most Promising Young Woman Journalist award for the year 2007. She was among 31 other awardees in the northern region. Rahman was given the...

Two stations of the proposed new Kolkata Metro Railway line will be named after journalists Barun Sengupta and Gour Kishore Ghosh, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee announced on Monday, according to Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). "The stations at Science City and Chingrighata of the new Metro Railway line between Kavi Subhas in South 24 Parganas and Dum Dum airport in North 24 Parganas will be...

Aboubakr Jamaï, the co-founder and former managing director of the weekly newspaper Le Journal Hebdomadaire and a pioneer of the independent press in Morocco, has been awarded the 2010 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) that honours an editor or publisher from the Arab region. The award honours the editor or publisher who...

Journalist too have been among the victims of the floods in Pakistan. One journalist has died and the houses of over 200 others have been damaged, according to the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ). The union has appealed to the international community, journalists, human rights organisations and overseas Pakistanis to generously support journalists affected by the floods. In an appeal...

Iranian journalist and dissident Akbar Ganji has been declared a World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute (IPI), in recognition of his decades of work defending freedom of speech and equal rights for all, in the face of continued harassment and imprisonment. Often called "Iran’s most prominent political dissident," Ganji spent six years in Iran’s infamous Evin prison for a...

A Jharkhand court has given bail to Sudha Pathak, mother of 23-year-old journalist Nirupama Pathak who was found dead in her home April 29, after police failed to file a chargesheet within the stipulated 90 days from her arrest. Sudha was arrested on May 3 after her New Delhi-based daughter Nirupama was found dead under mysterious circumstances at her home in Koderma's Chitragupta Nagar. "The...

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...