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(SEAPA/IFEX) - Press freedom and access to information in Thailand following a military coup against caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appears to be normalizing, one day into the military takeover, but an interruption in news flow on local and cable channels in the first hours of the putsch, and the military's assertion of ownership over the airwaves, underscore an unstable and...

(PROBIDAD/IFEX) - Journalist Óscar Valdez, director of "La otra cara" television programme, broadcast by Telecab company and Radio Antena 5 radio station in the northeastern department Olancho, is facing a lawsuit for alleged defamation and slander for having broadcast information about alleged irregularities in the sale of light bulbs or floodlights that consume less energy. The suit was filed by...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, September 19, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the disappearance of one independent journalist in the central Uzbek city of Jizzakh and the arrest of another. Dzhamshid Karimov, a former correspondent of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), who wrote critically about both local and federal officials, disappeared...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called for a full review of the case that saw an editor successfully prosecuted on September 15 for defamation under UNTAC law instead of the Cambodian Press Law. Dam Sith, editor in chief and publisher of the newspaper Khmer Conscience, was sentenced in absentia to pay a fine of 8 million riel (USD 2,000) for disinformation and 10...

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has condemned the beating which three journalists working for the Canal 6 de Julio television documentary production company - Mario Viveros Barragán, Juan Pablo Ramos Jiménez and Miguel Angel Fuentes Cortina - received at the hands of police officers when they filmed them arresting a youth gang in the centre of the capital on the night of 15 September 2006. The press freedom...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced "deep concern about the future of democracy in Burundi" after Aloys Kabura, the state-owned Agence Burundaise de Presse's correspondent in the northern city of Kayanza, was sentenced on 18 September 2006 by a court in Ngozi to five months in prison for "rebellion" and "defamatory statements." Kabura was arrested on 31 May for comments he made in a...

(Globe International/IFEX) - In the northern province of Huvsgul, a journalist and her coworkers have repeatedly received threats from businessmen concerning critical articles. U. Gereltuya, editor of the Huvsgul-based newspaper "Khuvsguliin erkh chuluu" ("Freedom of Khuvsgul"), which has approximately 500 subscribers, said, "We repeatedly receive threats and are insulted by businessmen." For...

(MISA/IFEX) - The first phase of reviewing Mozambique's 1991 press law, long regarded as one of the most enlightened pieces of media legislation in the world, concluded on 15 September 2006, announced the director of the government press office (GABINFO), Felisberto Tinga. Tinga said that GABINFO had submitted the draft amendments to the office of Prime Minister Luisa Diogo early in the day on 15...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has criticised the Tunisian authorities for expelling French journalist Léa Labaye, of the satirical website http://www.Bakchich.info, who was sent back to Paris immediately after arrival in Tunisia on 16 September 2006, without any official explanation. "This expulsion demonstrates once again that journalists who criticise President Ben Ali are not welcome...

(IAPA/IFEX) - MIAMI, Florida (September 18, 2006) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today protested attacks on employees at the La Razón newspaper in Bolivia by street newsvendors who are boycotting distribution and sales of the paper. The free-press organization joined a demand for official action to ensure full and unfettered circulation of the paper. On Sunday (September 17), some...