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MINSK, Belarus -- Authorities have halted an investigation into the stabbing death of an opposition journalist, a top prosecutor said Wednesday. Veronika Cherkasova, 44, who had worked for independent media outlets for the past 15 years, was killed in her home in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in October. Sergei Ivanov, a top prosecutor in charge of the investigation, told The Associated Press...

A Saudi journalist, Mshari Al-Zaydi, wrote about the "disease" of the Arab press blaming others for the Arab world's misfortunes in a London-based newspaper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, on November 20. "This huge obsession among some Arabs and Muslims regarding conspiracy theories and the belief that the world is lurking in wait to pounce on us, as if the world has no worries other than cooking up plans...

THE British government gagged the media yesterday to stop them revealing the identity of a spy reported to have helped torture terror suspects held in Greece. A leading Greek paper has named a man it claims is the MI6 station chief in Athens. He and another British official are alleged to have helped the Greek authorities arrest and then interrogate 28 Pakistani-born detainees seized in connection...

One of the biggest failures of the Nigerian media is its inability to purge itself of all hurtful presuppositions that generate a gulf between its news reports and the people whose lives reflect in – or are shaped by – that news. Indeed, there is a continuously shrinking space in our newspapers, for stories of the pedestrian daily existence of people on the blind spot of the social spectrum. The...

Dakar, Senegal, 12/28 - The Tribunal of Dakar on Tuesday sentenced the editorial director of the daily, L`Observateur, Alioune Ndiaye, a journalist of the same organ, Jean-Pierre Man`, and the editorial director of Le Courrier du jour, Pape Amadou Gaye, to three months of imprisonment with a suspended sentence. They were convicted of defaming Karim Wade, chairman of the National Agency for...

DUBAI - Arabic satellite television Al Arabiya accused Israel on Tuesday of violating press freedom and called on Israel to stop banning one of its journalists from travelling to the West Bank and Gaza. The Dubai-based channel said Israeli forces, which control all access to Palestinian-ruled areas except from Egypt, had stopped journalist Basim El Jamal from entering, citing "security reasons"...

BEIRUT: A Syrian suspect was formally arrested in Lebanon Tuesday for his alleged involvement in the assassination of anti-Syrian MP and journalist Gebran Tueni. In a move that increased suspicions of Syrian involvement in the string of assassinations targeting Lebanon for the past year, Military Investigating Magistrate Rashid Mezher issued an arrest warrant for Syrian national Abdel-Qader Abdel...

MEXICO CITY, Dec 27 (IPS) - Journalist and activist Lydia Cacho believes that the influence wielded by a powerful child prostitution and pornography ring is responsible for the death threats she has been receiving for months and her recent arrest on criminal libel charges. "Who wouldn't be afraid of these people? I'm afraid of them, and I have no doubt that the strings pulled by child...

PESHAWAR: A jirga in Hurmuz tribe has set a 48-hour deadline for the safe recovery of Hayatullah Khan, a journalist, who was kidnapped on December 5 from Mir Ali in North Waziristan. Ehsanullah Khan, brother of the kidnapped journalist, told Daily Times on Monday that the jirga, consisting of tribal clerics and chieftains, gave the deadline to the government. "If Hayatullah is not recovered within...

KABUL, 26 December (IRIN) - Regional warlords, coupled with low government presence, continue to threaten freedom of expression in Afghanistan, the country's leading media association warned on Monday in the capital, Kabul. "Journalists are still not considered entirely free. They face pressure and intimidation and violence from warlords in regions still not under the full control of the central...