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Djibouti (HAN) December 17, 2005 - A few glimmers of hope that Somalia may one day be re-invented. To Move cash the few score miles between Mogadishu, Somalia's lawless official capital, and Jowhar, the seat of its transitional government, a local money-vendor has to pay $6,000. For that he gets an armoured lorry, 30 gunmen and three "technicals"–jeeps with heavy machineguns. What he doesn't get...

Authorities in Tajikistan have released a journalist whose detention had been condemned by international media-rights groups, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reported. Jumaboy Tolibov was freed December 16, two months after the Tajik Supreme Court initially ordered his release. Speaking to RFE/RL, Tolibov thanked rights groups that had voiced concern about his prison term. Tolibov was jailed for two years

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A former London-based correspondent for Walt Disney Co.'s ABC News won a legal claim that he was fired for refusing to cover war zones, one of the first rulings in Britain arising from workplace-safety regulations. Richard Gizbert, 47, sued ABC for unfair dismissal for firing him in 2004 after he rejected assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan, contrary to a policy that all war...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has launched an ad campaign in 60 African newspapers to draw attention to the many murders of journalists in Africa that go unpunished. The launch camer on the seventh anniversary of Norbert Zongo's murder in Burkina Faso and a few days before the first anniversary of Deyda Hydara's murder in Gambia. Produced in French and English, the advertisement is being

A regional court in Peru has sentenced a mayor to 17 years in prison for ordering the killing of a journalist last year. The Ancash regional higher court December 14 sentenced Yungay mayor Amaro Léon Léon to prison for ordering the killing of Antonio de la Torre Echeandia, the presenter of a news programme on local Radio Orbita, who was stabbed to death on February 14, 2004 in Yungay (400 km

Press freedom violations in Uzbekistan have escalated since the Andijan killings in May 2005. There has been a growing tally of assaults, threats, beatings, sentences, expulsions and office closures, culminating in that of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on December 12, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. The offices of the BBC and media training organisation Internews have been

Moscow’s Military District Court has ruled the criminal actions against Colonel Pavel Popovskikh, an acquitted defendant in the case of a murdered journalist, were unjustified. Popovskikh is now to receive 2,135,000 rubles (about $75,000) in moral and material damages, Itar Tass reported Thursday. Popovskikh was among six suspects charged with the murder of Moscow journalist Dmitry Kholodov...

During the rush hour of Thursday morning on 7 July 2005, four bombs exploded in central London killing 56 people including four bombers. Three bombs exploded on tube trains near Aldgate East, between King’s Cross and Russell Square and, at Edgware Road London Underground tunnels. A fourth bomb went off on a crowded No.30 bus in Tavistock Square. News reporters were dispatched quickly to cover the...

At a rally of the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon this past March, among the chants of "Death to America" and the banners lauding Syria, some of the demonstrators brandished posters that threatened, in Arabic: "We are going to sweep Gebran Tueni from Lebanon." That is what someone has now done, with the car-bombing Monday on the outskirts of Beirut that murdered the 48-year-old Tueni, who was...

For a scribe, Gebran Tueni was shockingly high mannered. In his dapper suits, crisp shirts and designer ties, wearing a thin moustache that was always immaculately trimmed, he seemed to belong in a gentleman's club, not a newsroom. He didn't look the part of the bravest newspaperman in the Middle East. But after he was assassinated at the age of 48 this week in a car bombing that obliterated his...