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SANA’A, March 22 – Prosecution lawyers yesterday demanded that the English language Yemen Observer be shut down permanently and all the newspaper’s property and assets be confiscated, saying the newspaper insulted and mocked Islam and the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) by republishing caricatures of him. They also demanded that Editor-in-Chief Mohammed Al-Asaadi be forever banned from newspaper writing....

PRAGUE, March 22, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Khommadov spoke first about his physical condition, but he indicated that he was under the surveillance of security officials at his home in Turkmenistan. "Now I feel well," he says. "Very well. But in the village during all these days the [National Security Ministry or MNB] officers or some other security force employees are keeping watch over us." Khommadov and...

Meg Scholz, a senior at the University of Texas, goes online at least a few times every day to check her e-mail. When she does, Scholz invariably scans several news websites and blogs to see what's going on in the world. She rarely picks up a newspaper or watches TV news, because for her, the Web serves virtually all her news needs. "It's not that I have anything against reading a printed...

Romanian journalists George Buhnici, sued for illegal possession and use of special surveillance devices (SSD), was finally acquitted, his lawyer announced. This happened after the Supreme Cassation Court withdrew the disctrict prosecutors objection against the acquittal of the journalists. George Buhnici, an investigative journalist from commercial PRO TV, was seized 16 November 2004 in the...

Prague, March 22 (CTK) - The Czech Foreign Ministry has officially protested against a brutal attack on Czech reporter Jan Rybar from the daily Mlada fronta Dnes in the centre of Belarussian capital Minsk last Sunday night, the ministry press section informed CTK today. The Czech Republic asked the Belarussian authorities to investigate the incident as soon as possible. The Czech Foreign Ministry...

Colombian radio commentator Gustavo Rojas Gabalo died Monday of injuries he suffered in a February 4 shooting outside a local supermarket in the northwestern city of Montería, Córdoba province. Rojas, known as "El Gaba," died in the Salucoop Clinic in Medellín, the local press reported. TALKING PEACE: Colombian President Alvaro Uribe gives a speech during the opening ceremony of an

Ibéyise Pacheco, the El Nacional columnist sentenced to house arrest last Wednesday for defaming the character of Col. Angel Bellorín, was freed by Judge Belén Gamboa on Tuesday. In an interview with Globovisión immediately following her release, Pacheco framed the verdict as a victory for freedom of speech and of the press in Venezuela, saying she considered herself, "the representative of all...

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- A majority -- 57% -- of teens aged 13-17 now have a cellphone, but that’s far below the 80% of adults 18-plus who own a phone. Still, for a glimpse of the future, look no further than Generation Wireless. Cellphone users aged 13-17 are connected to their phones by ear, eye and touch like no other age group. They are far more likely than other demographic groups to use a...

New Delhi, March. 21 (PTI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, today assured journalists and non-journalists employees of newspapers and news agencies that the Government would look into their demand for setting up of new Wage Boards. Singh gave an assurance in this regard to a delegation of Confederation of Newspaper and News Agency Employees Organisations, the umbrella body of apex media trade...

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia | Political and economic pressure on the Slovenian media is on the rise. Despite many years of warnings by media experts that the state needs to abandon its indirect influence on the fourth estate, the center-right government of Janez Jansa isn’t showing any signs of breaking with the habits of its center-left predecessors. On the contrary, Slovenia’s most influential media are...