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New York, July 14, 2006—At least 14 Salvadoran reporters and photographers were attacked or harassed during three days of violent street protests last week in the capital, San Salvador, according to interviews and research by the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ today condemned the assaults and urged a thorough investigation. On July 5, hundreds of students gathered at the University of El...

BRUSSELS • The European Commission told Turkey yesterday it will have to rewrite its penal code again to meet EU standards after the country’s highest court confirmed a sentence against an editor for insulting “Turkishness”. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the High Court of Appeals ruling in the case of Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly Agos...

Turkey on Thursday faced growing demands to ease restrictions on freedom of speech after a court confirmed a six-month suspended jail sentence for an ethnic Armenian editor convicted of "insulting Turkishness". The European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, said after the ruling this week that Ankara should rewrite its penal code. Human rights groups and Turkish commentators urged the government...

CAIRO, Jul 13 (IPS) - Many journalists and opposition leaders are opposing a new law approved by parliament this week. They say the law fails to protect editors and reporters from imprisonment for so-called press violations. "The passage of this law actually represents a slight deterioration (of press freedom)," Hisham Kassem, vice-chairman of the leading independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm told...

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) today condemns the order banning Journalist Abdikarin Omar Moallin of Radio Banadir in Jowhar district of Middle Shabelle region to do his journalism work. The interim administration of Middle Shabelle region informed this morning the order banning him to work as stringer for Radio Banadir in the region. The reason behind the ban is a report he made...

The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the detention of a critical journalist in Azerbaijan on what local press freedom activists and opposition journalists call trumped up drug charges. Sakit Zakhidov, a prominent reporter and satirist for the Baku-based daily opposition newspaper Azadlyg, has been held since June 23. Azadlyg editor-in-chief, Qanimat Zakhidov, and other opposition...

New York, July 12, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by Egypt’s newly amended press law that fails to honor a promise by President Hosni Mubarak to abolish prison for press offenses. The law also sharply increases fines for defamation. The amendments lift some minor restrictions on the media but still mandate prison sentences for journalists convicted of insulting the...

An Armenian appeals court upheld on Wednesday the controversial pre-trial detention of the editor of an independent newspaper critical of the government who is facing up to five years in prison for alleged draft evasion. The panel of three judges rejected a petition to overturn a lower court ruling that allowed state prosecutors to keep Arman Babajanian of the “Zhamanak Yerevan” newspaper under a...

SANAA, Yemen, July 12 (UPI) -- A Yemeni court ordered the suspension of the editor in chief of an opposition magazine from work for six months in a new crackdown on unruly journalists. In addition to being barred from work in the Wahdawi magazine, mouthpiece of the Unionist Nasserite Popular Party, Ali Sakkaf was ordered by the court Wednesday to pay a fine of half a million Yemeni royals ($2,000)...

The detention and interrogation last week of a Sri Lankan military intelligence officer and a soldier over the murder of a free lance journalist, Sampath Lakmal de Silva, raises further questions about the intrigues of the armed forces in provoking a return to war on the island. The 23-year-old De Silva was killed on July 1. According to the police, his assailants shot him four times—once in the...