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Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko has called for the high-profile trial into journalist Heorhiy Gongadze's killing to be opened to the public, criticising the court's decision last month to bar journalists from much of the proceedings, his top aide said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press (A). AND SITLL HE HAS THAT PROMISE TO KEEP: Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko seen during his

A pregnant journalist is being held in Ethiopia for two weeks now without being charged. Frezer Negash, a correspondent for the US-based Ethiopian Review was arrested on January 27. "No civilised state can tolerate such detention without trial," Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said,"and this denial of justice is even more deplorable because she is three months pregnant." GUILTY AS NOT CHARGED

Journalists in Colombia are increasingly coming under pressure for their work. Yet another journalist was forced to flee on February 8 – the third journalist forced to flee the place of work in the face of death threats this year alone. COMRADE IN ARMS: File photo of rebel commander Raul Reyes, one of the seven-member governing secretariat Marxist rebel army, gesturing during a Reuters interview

The Burma junta has launched a campaign to track down people who pass on information to the international media. Military officers have been trained in how to identify the sources used by international radio stations and new phone tapping facilities have been installed, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Burma Media Association (BMA). EYEING INFORMERS: Burmese military leader Gen

The Mexican government will name a special prosecutor to investigate crimes against journalists. The move comes two days after gunmen stormed a newspaper office in the US-Mexico border town of Nuevo Laredo, seriously wounding one reporter. TIME TO GIVE IT A SHOT: Mexico president Vicente Fox speaks during a news conference in Vina del Mar, 85 miles south of Santiago, Chile January 26. Fox had

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – The owner of Nuevo Laredo's El Manana newspaper said he will almost completely stop covering drug gangs after the company officers were attacked by assailants who sprayed the reception with bullets and lobbed a grenade at the building. "Zero investigations into the narco," Ramon Cantu said Tuesday, while more than 50 state and federal police guarded his offices. Under the...

MEXICO CITY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Heavily armed gunmen blasted their way into the offices of a newspaper on Mexico's drug-plagued border with the United States on Monday, tossing a grenade at journalists and gravely wounding a reporter. A handful of men firing assault rifles burst into the newsroom of El Manana newspaper in the city of Nuevo Laredo, director Daniel Rosas told Reuters by telephone...

The publication director of a private weekly newspaper was sentenced Monday to two months in prison for allegedly defaming a local businessman, according to two local journalist organisations. Ibrahim Manzo, director of L'Autre Observateur, was arrested and placed in "preventive detention" on Thursday; his trial lasted a single day. He is being held in a prison in Niamey, the capital. Manzo is the...

Guatemala's highest court has struck down laws that criminalised expressions deemed offensive to public officials. The court ruled that desacato, or disrespect, provisions were unconstitutional and constituted "an attack on freedom of expression and the right to be informed." ONE THAT GOT AWAY: Former military strongman Efrain Rios Montt, right, appears in court in Guatemala City, Friday January

Tehran, 6 Feb. (AKI) - A 19-year-old Iranian journalist, Elham Foroutan, risks the death penalty for a satirical article in which she compares the Islamic revolution in Iran to the AIDS virus. Foroutan, wrote the article for the magazine, Tamaddon Hormozgan, a weekly which is published in Bandar Abbas, in the south of Iran. Foroutan, was arrested together with six editors of the magazine, whose...