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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The widow of a Pakistani journalist, shot dead last year after reporting that an al Qaeda leader was killed by a U.S. missile, was killed in a bomb blast on Saturday in a northwestern tribal region, a family member said. The bomb planted outside the family house in the town of Mir Ali, in the North Waziristan region near the Afghan border, went off early in the morning...

News channels on the Pakistani networks GEO TV and ARY Digital were ordered by authorities to halt transmission Friday from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after they refused to sign a Pakistani government-mandated “code of conduct.” Pakistani journalists hold placards at a protest camp against the media crackdown by the government in Islamabad, Pakistan on Tuesday, November 13, 2007. Authorities...

(IAPA/IFEX) - Miami (November 16, 2007) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today qualified as inhumane and repressive the Cuban government's refusal to grant exit visas to independent journalists who have resident permits in other countries. IAPA's chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, called on the government in Havana "to halt the...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of Abolfazl Abedini Nasr of the weekly "Bahar Khozestan" by ministry of intelligence officials in the southern city of Ahvaz on 13 November 2007. It is not known where he is being held. In a separate development, three newspaper journalists have been given prison sentences in the north of the country. "We urge the authorities to provide...

(NUSOJ/IFEX) - The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) expresses its deep concern over the increasing dangers confronted by Somali journalists and the growing clampdown on the operations of the media in Mogadishu. The shutdown of three well-known, privately-owned radio stations - Shabelle, Simba and Banadir - by the security forces of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG)...

Mogadishu mayor Mohamed Omar Habeb’s demands that news media and journalists must register with the authorities in order to be able work in the capital are a violation of the Transitional Federal Government’s undertakings, Reporters Without Borders said today in a letter to President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Mayor Habeb said on 14 November that “all the media” including “representatives of foreign...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned an order issued on 12 November by a military court in the eastern city of Van banning any media reports, comments or criticism of an investigation into eight soldiers held on suspicion of “persistent insubordination,” abandoning their positions and failing to fight as ordered against guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The soldiers were...

(MISA/IFEX) - The government has controversially retained Dr. Tafataona Mahoso as the chairperson of the restructured state-controlled Media and Information Commission (MIC) which will look into the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe's (ANZ) application to be duly licensed despite court findings on his bias against the publishing company. On 30 October 2007, Dr. Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, the minister of...

(MISA/IFEX) - The trial of Bright Chibvuri, the editor of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) magazine, "The Worker", which was scheduled to continue in the southwestern border town of Plumtree on 5 November 2007, was postponed indefinitely due to the ongoing strike by some of the country's magistrates. Magistrates in Harare and Bulawayo embarked on the strike action during the week of 5...

(CJFE/IFEX) - (Toronto, November 14, 2007) Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) today hailed the Ontario Court of Appeal's decision affirming the news media's right to publish information in the public's interest as a significant victory for freedom of expression. "The decision will decrease the chilling effect of potential libel suits on reporters and editors," CJFE President Arnold...