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(MFWA/IFEX) - On 13 September 2007, Asana Gordon, central regional correspondent of the Accra-based privately owned daily newspaper "Daily Dispatch", was barred from covering the Central Regional Health Service awards ceremony to honour stakeholders in the health sector by Clarence Lartey, the public relations officer of the Central Regional Coordinating Council (RCC). Media Foundation for West...

Reporters Without Borders and its partner organisation in Democratic Republic of Congo, Journalist in Danger (JED), are outraged that two petty criminals who were convicted by a military court of shooting UN radio journalist Serge Maheshe in the eastern city of Bukavu have written a letter accusing two military judges of bribing them to say two of Maheshe’s friends paid them to kill him. The two...

Authorities in Bangladesh on Tuesday ordered the arrest of a cartoonist and confiscated copies of a major newspaper's weekly supplement for publishing a "blasphemous" caricature. "The government has confiscated the issue as the c-artoon hurt the religious sentiments of the people. Moreover, an order was issued to arrest cartoonist Arifur Rahman," an official statement said, referring to the weekly...

The Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (BDVZ) has warned against "damage to the sensitive good that is the freedom of the press" in Germany. The "series of preliminary proceedings launched of late against journalists for allegedly aiding and abetting the betrayal of secrets" pointed to a "highly questionable interpretation of freedom of the press," Helmut Heinen, the president of...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A judge on Tuesday ordered Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder to leave his job for a year, a sweeping victory for the rival St. Paul Pioneer Press, which had accused its former publisher of misusing proprietary information. Ridder's actions when he joined the Star Tribune in March caused the Pioneer Press "irreparable harm," Judge David C. Higgs wrote. He said an injunction was...

Members of the Somali Transitional National Government security forces raided the Radio Shabelle office in the capital, Mogadishu, Saturday morning and detained 19 staff members, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The security forces accused the journalists of throwing a grenade at a police patrol. Security forces fired into a nearby hallway during a daily editorial meeting...

A 14-year-old boy was assaulted last week in Islamabad for his father's reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Hassan Sharjil, son of prominent journalist Shakil Ahmad Turabi, editor-in-chief of the South Asian News Agency, was beaten September 14 by a man outside his school as he was dropped off for classes in the morning. Another man remained at the wheel of a four

(CEPET/IFEX) - Mexico, 18 September 2007 - Federal judicial authorities have acquitted four journalists in Monclova, Coahuila, in northeastern Mexico, of the dubious charges brought against them by officials who arrested and mistreated the journalists when they tried to cover an anti-narcotics operation in August 2007. On 7 August, the journalists were arrested and detained by Army troops and...

New York, September 18, 2007— An abducted Pakistani journalist alleged that he was kidnapped by government agents a few days ago and released after questioning. Babar Hussain, a reporter for Dawn TV, was grabbed near his home in Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad, by three men in a two-door cream-colored Pajero—a vehicle favored by government intelligence agencies, according to many local...

Reporters Without Borders is dismayed by the Casablanca appeal court’s decision today to uphold a prison sentence for reporter Mostapha Hurmatallah of the Arabic-language weekly Al Watan Al An, one week after he was freed pending the outcome of his appeal. “This ruling marks the end of the relative respite the Moroccan press has been enjoying of late,” the press freedom organisation said....