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(JED/IFEX) - On 25 May 2006, cameraman Ghislain Ngatieba, of the private station Radiotélévision Groupe l'Avenir (RTG), broadcast from Kinshasa, was beaten by a group of police officers who were providing security for the musical artist Ngiama Makanda, also known as Werrason. Ngatieba told JED that he was sent by the station to cover the arrival of the American star Shaggy in Kinshasa. "I was in...

According to a report prepared by members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), violations of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of association and other basic human rights are still rampant following the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Tunisia in November 2005. The report, entitled "Deception and Lies...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 25, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that a request by a Venezuelan state assembly to evict the daily Correo del Caroní from its premises in a zoning dispute is an attempt to silence the newspaper's critical reporting on local government corruption. The Bolívar state legislature said in a May 19 report that publishing company Roderick Editorial...

BOGOTA, Colombia - It was the sort of scoop any ambitious journalist would jump on. But reporting it could have cost Jorge Quintero his life. With the help of local officials, a bank manager in the small southwestern Colombian town of Florencia allegedly funneled $11 million in public funds into the foreign bank account of a convicted drug trafficker. Despite sitting on a pile of incriminating...

THE Chinese media is using fewer characters and to understand 90 per cent of the content in publications people need only know about 900 of the thousands of pictographs that make up the script, a new study has revealed. The findings of a survey conducted by the education ministry and language commission were based on 900 million characters used in more than 8.9 million files chosen from newspapers...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 21 May 2006, Panamericana Televisión journalist Janet Mori and "El Comercio" newspaper photographer Enrique Cúneo were assaulted by Daniel Abugattás, recently elected to Congress for the political alliance Unión por el Perú (UPP). The incident occurred as the politician attempted to enter, although he was not invited, the premises where a public debate between presidential...

New York, May 23, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the closure today of an Iranian state newspaper, and the arrest of its editor-in-chief and a cartoonist who published a cartoon that sparked riots by ethnic Azeris in the northwestern city of Tabriz. Tehran's chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, ordered the arrest of Mehrdad Qasemfar, editor-in-chief of "Iran Friday", the...

New York, May 23, 2006 - The Ivanovo regional prosecutor's office in central Russia has opened a criminal libel investigation against Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor-in-chief of the news Web site Kursiv, for allegedly insulting President Vladimir Putin, according to Russian press reports. On Thursday, Kursiv published an article headlined, "Putin as Russia's phallic symbol," in which Rakhmankov...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 22 May 2006, several journalists denounced the fact that unknown persons had hacked into their e-mail accounts and distributed lists of the e-mail passwords of at least 20 reporters. The accusation comes only a few days after the surreptitious monitoring and private information theft from the e-mail account of "Clarín" journalist Daniel Santoro was made public. The information in...

New York, May 23, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed at a spate of attacks on the press in the run-up to the July 30 elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Monday, armed assailants smashed and looted equipment at Kinshasa-based broadcaster Radiotélévision Message de Vie (RTMV), forcing it off the air for the second time this month, according to CPJ sources. The press...